Plutarch: Lives of the noble Grecians and Romans
Sylla, who amongst the Romans so formidable as Marius? what king more
powerful than Mithridates? who of the Italians more warlike than
Lamponius and Telesinus? yet of these, one he drove into banishment,
one he quelled, and the others he slew.
And what is more important, in my judgment, than anything yet
adduced, is that Lysander had the assistance of the State in all his
achievements; whereas Sylla, besides that he was a banished person,
and overpowered by a faction, at a time when his wife was driven from
home, his houses demolished, and adherents slain, himself then in
Boeotia, stood embattled against countless numbers of the public
enemy, and endangering himself for the sake of his country, raised a
trophy of victory; and not even when Mithridates came with proposals
of alliance and aid against his enemies, would he show any sort of
compliance, or even clemency; did not so much as address him, or
vouchsafe him his hand, until he had it from the king's own mouth,
that he was willing to quit Asia, surrender the navy, and restore
Bithynia and Cappadocia to the two kings. Than which action, Sylla
never performed a braver, or with a nobler spirit, when, preferring
the public good to the private, and like good hounds, where he had
once fixed, never letting go his hold, till the enemy yielded, then,
and not until then, he set himself to revenge his own private
quarrels. We may perhaps let ourselves be influenced, moreover, in
our comparison of their characters, by considering their treatment of
Athens. Sylla, when he had made himself master of the city, which
then upheld the dominion and power of Mithridates in opposition to
him, restored her to liberty and the free exercise of her own laws;
Lysander, on the contrary, when she had fallen from a vast height of
dignity and rule, showed her no compassion, but abolishing her
democratic government, imposed on her the most cruel and lawless
tyrants. We are now qualified to consider, whether we should go far
from the truth or no, in pronouncing that Sylla performed the more
glorious deeds, but Lysander committed the fewer faults, as,
likewise, by giving to one the preeminence for moderation and
self-control, to the other, for conduct and valor.
CIMON
Peripoltas, the prophet, having brought the king Opheltas, and those
under his command, from Thessaly into Boeotia, left there a family,
which flourished a long time after; the greatest part of them
inhabiting Chaeronea, the first city out of which they expelled the
barbarians. The descendants of this race, being men of bold attempts
and warlike habits, exposed themselves to so many dangers, in the
invasions of the Mede, and in battles against the Gauls, that at last
they were almost wholly consumed.
There was left one orphan of this house, called Damon, surnamed
Peripoltas, in beauty and greatness of spirit surpassing all of his
age, but rude and undisciplined in temper. A Roman captain of a
company that wintered in Chaeronea became passionately fond of this
youth, who was now pretty nearly grown a man. And finding all his
approaches, his gifts, and his entreaties alike repulsed, he showed
violent inclinations to assault Damon. Our native Chaeronea was then
in a distressed condition, too small and too poor to meet with
anything but neglect. Damon, being sensible of this, and looking
upon himself as injured already, resolved to inflict punishment.
Accordingly, he and sixteen of his companions conspired against the
captain; but that the design might be managed without any danger of
being discovered, they all daubed their faces at night with soot.
Thus disguised and inflamed with wine, they set upon him by break of
day, as he was sacrificing in the marketplace; and having killed him,
and several others that were with him, they fled out of the city,
which was extremely alarmed and troubled at the murder. The council
assembled immediately, and pronounced sentence of death against Damon
and his accomplices. This they did to justify the city to the
Romans. But that evening, as the magistrates were at supper
together, according to the custom, Damon and his confederates
breaking into the hall, killed them, and then again fled out of the
town. About this time, Lucius Lucullus chanced to be passing that
way with a body of troops, upon some expedition, and this disaster
having but recently happened, he stayed to examine the matter. Upon
inquiry, he found the city was in nowise faulty, but rather that they
themselves had suffered; therefore he drew out the soldiers, and
carried them away with him. Yet Damon continuing to ravage the
country all about, the citizens, by messages and decrees, in
appearance favorable, enticed him into the city, and upon his return,
made him Gymnasiarch; but afterwards as he was anointing himself in
the vapor baths, they set upon him and killed him. For a long while
after apparitions continuing to be seen, and groans to be heard in
that place, so our fathers have told us, they ordered the gates of
the baths to be built up; and even to this day those who live in the
neighborhood believe that they sometimes see specters, and hear
alarming sounds. The posterity of Damon, of whom some still remain,
mostly in Phocis, near the town of Stiris, are called Asbolomeni,
that is, in the Aeolian idiom, men daubed with soot; because Damon
was thus besmeared when he committed this murder.
But there being a quarrel between the people of Chaeronea and the
Orchomenians, their neighbors, these latter hired an informer, a
Roman, to accuse the community of Chaeronea, as if it had been a
single person, of the murder of the Romans, of which only Damon and
his companions were guilty; accordingly, the process wee commenced,
and the cause pleaded before the Praetor of Macedon, since the Romans
as yet had not sent governors into Greece.
The advocates who defended the inhabitants appealed to the testimony
of Lucullus, who, in answer to a letter the Praetor wrote to him,
returned a true account of the matter-of-fact. By this means the
town obtained its acquittal, and escaped a most serious danger. The
citizens thus preserved erected a statue to Lucullus in the
market-place, near that of the god Bacchus.
We also have the same impressions of gratitude; and though removed
from the events by the distance of several generations, we yet feel
the obligation to extend to ourselves; and as we think an image of
the character and habits, to be a greater honor than one merely
representing the face and the person, we will put Lucullus's life
amongst our parallels of illustrious men, and without swerving from
the truth, will record his actions. The commemoration will be itself
a sufficient proof of our grateful feeling, and he himself would not
thank us, if in recompense for a service, which consisted in speaking
the truth, we should abuse his memory with a false and counterfeit
narration. For as we would wish that a painter who is to draw a
beautiful face in which there is yet some imperfection, should
neither wholly leave out, nor yet too pointedly express what is
defective, because this would deform it, and that spoil the
resemblance; so, since it is hard, or indeed perhaps impossible, to
show the life of a man wholly free from blemish, in all that is
excellent we must follow truth exactly, and give it fully; any lapses
or faults that occur, through human passions or political
necessities, we may regard rather as the shortcomings of some
particular virtue, than as the natural effects of vice; and may be
content without introducing them, curiously and officiously, into our
narrative, if it be but out of tenderness to the weakness of nature,
which has never succeeded in producing any human character so perfect
in virtue, as to be pure from all admixture, and open to no
criticism. On considering; with myself to whom I should compare
Lucullus, I find none so exactly his parallel as Cimon.
They were both valiant in war, and successful against the barbarians;
both gentle in political life, and more than any others gave their
countrymen a respite from civil troubles at home, while abroad, each
of them raised trophies and gained famous victories. No Greek before
Cimon, nor Roman before Lucullus, ever carried the scene of war so
far from their own country; putting out of the question the acts of
Bacchus and Hercules, and any exploit of Perseus against the
Ethiopians, Medes, and Armenians, or again of Jason, of which any
record that deserves credit can be said to have come down to our
days. Moreover in this they were alike, that they did not finish the
enterprises they undertook. They brought their enemies near their
ruin, but never entirely conquered them. There was yet a greater
conformity in the free good-will and lavish abundance of their
entertainments and general hospitalities, and in the youthful laxity
of their habits. Other points of resemblance, which we have failed
to notice, may be easily collected from our narrative itself.
Cimon was the son of Miltiades and Hegesipyle, who was by birth a
Thracian, and daughter to the king Olorus, as appears from the poems
of Melanthius and Archelaus, written in praise of Cimon. By this
means the historian Thucydides was his kinsman by the mother's side;
for his father's name also, in remembrance of this common ancestor,
was Olorus, and he was the owner of the gold mines in Thrace, and met
his death, it is said, by violence, in Scapte Hyle, a district of
Thrace; and his remains having afterwards been brought into Attica, a
monument is shown as his among those of the family of Cimon, near the
tomb of Elpinice, Cimon's sister. But Thucydides was of the township
of Halimus, and Miltiades and his family were Laciadae. Miltiades,
being condemned in a fine of fifty talents to the State, and unable
to pay it, was cast into prison, and there died. Thus Cimon was left
an orphan very young, with his sister Elpinice, who was also young
and unmarried. And at first he had but an indifferent reputation,
being looked upon as disorderly in his habits, fond of drinking, and
resembling his grandfather, also called Cimon, in character, whose
simplicity got him the surname of Coalemus. Stesimbrotus of Thasos,
who lived near about the same time with Cimon, reports of him that he
had little acquaintance either with music, or any of the other
liberal studies and accomplishments, then common among the Greeks;
that he had nothing whatever of the quickness and the ready speech of
his countrymen in Attica; that he had great nobleness and candor in
his disposition, and in his character in general, resembled rather a
native of Peloponnesus, than of Athens; as Euripides describes
Hercules,
-- Rude
And unrefined, for great things well-endued;
for this may fairly be added to the character which Stesimbrotus has
given of him.
They accused him, in his younger years, of cohabiting with his own
sister Elpinice, who, indeed, otherwise had no very clear reputation,
but was reported to have been over intimate with Polygnotus, the
painter; and hence, when he painted the Trojan women in the porch,
then called the Plesianactium, and now the Poecile, he made Laodice a
portrait of her. Polygnotus was not an ordinary mechanic, nor was he
paid for this work, but out of a desire to please the Athenians,
painted the portico for nothing. So it is stated by the historians,
and in the following verses by the poet Melanthius: --
Wrought by his hand the deeds of heroes grace
At his own charge our temples and our Place.
Some affirm that Elpinice lived with her brother, not secretly, but
as his married wife, her poverty excluding her from any suitable
match. But afterward, when Callias, one of the richest men of
Athens, fell in love with her, and proffered to pay the fine the