Plutarch: Lives of the noble Grecians and Romans
musicians, and dancers, drinking with them on couches night and day.
His chief favorites were Roscius the comedian, Sorex the arch mime,
and Metrobius the player, for whom, though past his prime, he still
professed a passionate fondness. By these courses he encouraged a
disease which had begun from some unimportant cause; and for a long
time he failed to observe that his bowels were ulcerated, till at
length the corrupted flesh broke out into lice. Many, were employed
day and night in destroying them, but the work so multiplied under
their hands, that not only his clothes, baths, basins, but his very
meat was polluted with that flux and contagion, they came swarming
out in such numbers. He went frequently by day into the bath to
scour and cleanse his body, but all in vain; the evil generated too
rapidly and too abundantly for any ablutions to overcome it. There
died of this disease, amongst those of the most ancient times,
Acastus, the son of Pelias; of later date, Alcman the poet,
Pherecydes the theologian, Callisthenes the Olynthian, in the time of
his imprisonment, as also Mucius the lawyer; and if we may mention
ignoble, but notorious names, Eunus the fugitive, who stirred up the
slaves of Sicily to rebel against their masters, after he was brought
captive to Rome, died of this creeping sickness.
Sylla not only foresaw his end, but may be also said to have written
of it. For in the two and twentieth book of his Memoirs, which he
finished two days before his death, he writes that the Chaldeans
foretold him, that after he had led a life of honor, he should
conclude it in fullness of prosperity. He declares, moreover, that
in vision he had seen his son, who had died not long before Metella,
stand by in mourning attire, and beseech his father to cast off
further care, and come along with him to his mother Metella, there to
live at ease and quietness with her. However, he could not refrain
from intermeddling in public affairs. For, ten days before his
decease, he composed the differences of the people of Dicaearchia,
and prescribed laws for their better government. And the very day
before his end, it being told him that the magistrate Granius
deferred the payment of a public debt, in expectation of his death,
he sent for him to his house, and placing his attendants about him,
caused him to be strangled; but through the straining of his voice
and body, the imposthume breaking, he lost a great quantity of blood.
Upon this, his strength failing him, after spending a troublesome
night, he died, leaving behind him two young children by Metella.
Valeria was afterwards delivered of a daughter, named Posthuma; for
so the Romans call those who are born after the father's death.
Many ran tumultuously together, and joined with Lepidus, to deprive
the corpse of the accustomed solemnities; but Pompey, though offended
at Sylla, (for he alone of all his friends, was not mentioned in his
will,) having kept off some by his interest and entreaty, others by
menaces, conveyed the body to Rome, and gave it a secure and
honorable burial. It is said that the Roman ladies contributed such
vast heaps of spices, that besides what was carried on two hundred
and ten litters, there was sufficient to form a large figure of Sylla
himself, and another, representing a lictor, out of the costly
frankincense and cinnamon. The day being cloudy in the morning, they
deferred carrying forth the corpse till about three in the afternoon,
expecting it would rain. But a strong wind blowing full upon the
funeral pile, and setting it all in a bright flame, the body was
consumed so exactly in good time, that the pyre had begun to smolder,
and the fire was upon the point of expiring, when a violent rain came
down, which continued till night. So that his good fortune was firm
even to the last, and did as it were officiate at his funeral. His
monument stands in the Campus Martius, with an epitaph of his own
writing; the substance of it being, that he had not been outdone by
any of his friends in doing good turns, nor by any of his foes in
doing bad.
COMPARISON OF LYSANDER WITH SYLLA
Having completed this Life also, come we now to the comparison. That
which was common to them both, was that they were founders of their
own greatness, with this difference, that Lysander had the consent of
his fellow-citizens, in times of sober judgment, for the honors he
received; nor did he force anything from them against their
good-will, nor hold any power contrary to the laws.
In civil strife e'en villains rise to fame.
And so then at Rome, when the people were distempered, and the
government out of order, one or other was still raised to despotic
power; no wonder, then, if Sylla reigned, when the Glauciae and
Saturnini drove out the Metelli, when sons of consuls were slain in
the assemblies, when silver and gold purchased men and arms, and fire
and sword enacted new laws, and put down lawful opposition. Nor do I
blame anyone, in such circumstances, for working himself into
supreme power, only I would not have it thought a sign of great
goodness, to be head of a State so wretchedly discomposed. Lysander,
being employed in the greatest commands and affairs of State, by a
sober and well-governed city, may be said to have had repute as the
best and most virtuous man, in the best and most virtuous
commonwealth. And thus, often returning the government into the
hands of the citizens, he received it again as often, the superiority
of his merit still awarding him the first place. Sylla, on the other
hand, when he had once made himself general of an army, kept his
command for ten years together, creating himself sometimes consul,
sometimes proconsul, and sometimes dictator, but always remaining a
tyrant.
It is true Lysander, as was said, designed to introduce a new form of
government; by milder methods, however, and more agreeably to law
than Sylla, not by force of arms, but persuasion, nor by subverting
the whole State at once, but simply by amending the succession of the
kings; in a way, moreover, which seemed the naturally just one, that
the most deserving should rule, especially in a city which itself
exercised command in Greece, upon account of virtue, not nobility.
For as the hunter considers the whelp itself, not the bitch, and the
horse-dealer the foal, not the mare, (for what if the foal should
prove a mule?) so likewise were that politician extremely out, who,
in the choice of a chief magistrate, should inquire, not what the man
is, but how descended. The very Spartans themselves have deposed
several of their kings for want of kingly virtues, as degenerated and
good for nothing. As a vicious nature, though of an ancient stock,
is dishonorable, it must be virtue itself, and not birth, that makes
virtue honorable. Furthermore, the one committed his acts of
injustice for the sake of his friends; the other extended his to his
friends themselves. It is confessed on all hands, that Lysander
offended most commonly for the sake of his companions, committing
several slaughters to uphold their power and dominion; but as for
Sylla, he, out of envy, reduced Pompey's command by land, and
Dolabella's by sea, although he himself had given them those places;
and ordered Lucretius Ofella, who sued for the consulship as the
reward of many great services, to be slain before his eyes, exciting
horror and alarm in the minds of all men, by his cruelty to his
dearest friends.
As regards the pursuit of riches and pleasures, we yet further
discover in one a princely, in the other a tyrannical disposition.
Lysander did nothing that was intemperate or licentious, in that full
command of means and opportunity, but kept clear, as much as ever man
did, of that trite saying,
Lions at home, but foxes out of doors;
and ever maintained a sober, truly Spartan, and well disciplined
course of conduct. Whereas Sylla could never moderate his unruly
affections, either by poverty when young, or by years when grown old,
but would be still prescribing laws to the citizens concerning
chastity and sobriety, himself living all that time, as Sallust
affirms, in lewdness and adultery. By these ways he so impoverished
and drained the city of her treasures, as to be forced to sell
privileges and immunities to allied and friendly cities for money,
although he daily gave up the wealthiest and greatest families to
public sale and confiscation. There was no end of his favors vainly
spent and thrown away on flatterers; for what hope could there be, or
what likelihood of forethought or economy, in his more private
moments over wine, when, in the open face of the people, upon the
auction of a large estate, which he would have passed over to one of
his friends at a small price, because another bid higher, and the
officer announced the advance, he broke out into a passion, saying,
"What a strange and unjust thing is this, O citizens, that I cannot
dispose of my own booty as I please!" But Lysander, on the contrary,
with the rest of the spoil, sent home for public use even the
presents which were made him. Nor do I commend him for it, for he
perhaps, by excessive liberality, did Sparta more harm, than ever the
other did Rome by rapine; I only use it as an argument of his
indifference to riches. They exercised a strange influence on their
respective cities. Sylla, a profuse debauchee, endeavored to restore
sober living amongst the citizens; Lysander, temperate himself,
filled Sparta with the luxury he disregarded. So that both were
blameworthy, the one for raising himself above his own laws, the
other for causing his fellow citizens to fall beneath his own
example. He taught Sparta to want the very things which he himself
had learned to do without. And thus much of their civil
administration.
As for feats of arms, wise conduct in war, innumerable victories,
perilous adventures, Sylla was beyond compare. Lysander, indeed,
came off twice victorious in two battles by sea; I shall add to that
the siege of Athens, a work of greater fame, than difficulty. What
occurred in Boeotia, and at Haliartus, was the result, perhaps, of
ill fortune; yet it certainly looks like ill counsel, not to wait for
the king's forces, which had all but arrived from Plataea, but out of
ambition and eagerness to fight, to approach the walls at
disadvantage, and so to be cut off by a sally of inconsiderable men.
He received his death-wound, not as Cleombrotus at Leuctra, resisting
manfully the assault of an enemy in the field; not as Cyrus or
Epaminondas, sustaining the declining battle, or making sure the
victory; all these died the death of kings and generals; but he, as
it had been some common skirmisher or scout, cast away his life
ingloriously, giving testimony to the wisdom of the ancient Spartan
maxim, to avoid attacks on walled cities, in which the stoutest
warrior may chance to fall by the hand, not only of a man utterly his
inferior, but by that of a boy or woman, as Achilles, they say, was
slain by Paris in the gates. As for Sylla, it were hard to reckon up
how many set battles he won, or how many thousands he slew; he took
Rome itself twice, as also the Athenian Piraeus, not by famine, as
Lysander did, but by a series of great battles, driving Archelaus
into the sea. And what is most important, there was a vast
difference between the commanders they had to deal with. For I look
upon it as an easy task, or rather sport, to beat Antiochus,
Alcibiades's pilot, or to circumvent Philocles, the Athenian
demagogue,
Sharp only at the inglorious point of tongue,
whom Mithridates would have scorned to compare with his groom, or
Marius with his lictor. But of the potentates, consuls, commanders,
and demagogues, to pass by all the rest who opposed themselves to