Plutarch: Lives of the noble Grecians and Romans
impatient at his rough behavior and Lacedaemonian haughtiness, and
had, as Timaeus tells us, discovered sordidness and avarice in his
character, vices which may have descended to him from his father
Cleandrides, who was convicted of bribery and banished. And the
very man himself, of the one thousand talents which Lysander sent
to Sparta, embezzled thirty, and hid them under the tiles of his
house, and was detected and shamefully fled his country. But this
is related more at large in the life of Lysander. Timaeus says
that Demosthenes and Nicias did not die, as Thucydides and
Philistus have written, by the order of the Syracusans, but that
upon a message sent them from Hermocrates, whilst yet the assembly
were sitting, by the connivance of some of their guards, they were
enabled to put an end to themselves. Their bodies, however, were
thrown out before the gates and offered for a public spectacle.
And I have heard that to this day in a temple at Syracuse is shown
a shield, said to have been Nicias's, curiously wrought and
embroidered with gold and purple intermixed. Most of the Athenians
perished in the quarries by diseases and ill diet, being allowed
only one pint of barley every day, and one half pint of water.
Many of them, however, were carried off by stealth, or, from the
first, were supposed to be servants, and were sold as slaves.
These latter were branded on their foreheads with the figure of a
horse. There were, however, Athenians, who, in addition to
slavery, had to endure even this. But their discreet and orderly
conduct was an advantage to them; they were either soon set free,
or won the respect of their masters with whom they continued to
live. Several were saved for the sake of Euripides, whose poetry,
it appears, was in request among the Sicilians more than among any
of the settlers out of Greece. And when any travelers arrived that
could tell them some passage, or give them any specimen of his
verses, they were delighted to be able to communicate them to one
another. Many of the captives who got safe back to Athens are
said, after they reached home, to have gone and made their
acknowledgments to Euripides, relating how that some of them had
been released from their slavery by teaching what they could
remember of his poems, and others, when straggling after the fight,
been relieved with meat and drink for repeating some of his lyrics.
Nor need this be any wonder, for it is told that a ship of Caunus
fleeing into one of their harbors for protection, pursued by
pirates, was not received, but forced back, till one asked if they
knew any of Euripides's verses, and on their saying they did, they
were admitted, and their ship brought into harbor.
It is said that the Athenians would not believe their loss, in a
great degree because of the person who first brought them news of
it. For a certain stranger, it seems, coming to Piraeus, and there
sitting in a barber's shop, began to talk of what had happened, as
if the Athenians already knew all that had passed; which the barber
hearing, before he acquainted anybody else, ran as fast as he could
up into the city, addressed himself to the Archons, and presently
spread it about in the public Place. On which, there being
everywhere, as may be imagined, terror and consternation, the
Archons summoned a general assembly, and there brought in the man
and questioned him how he came to know. And he, giving no
satisfactory account, was taken for a spreader of false
intelligence and a disturber of the city, and was, therefore,
fastened to the wheel and racked a long time, till other messengers
arrived that related the whole disaster particularly. So hardly
was Nicias believed to have suffered the calamity which he had
often predicted.
CRASSUS
Marcus Crassus, whose father had borne the office of a censor, and
received the honor of a triumph, was educated in a little house
together with his two brothers, who both married in their parents'
lifetime; they kept but one table amongst them; all which,
perhaps, was not the least reason of his own temperance and
moderation in diet. One of his brothers dying, he married his
widow, by whom he had his children; neither was there in these
respects any of the Romans who lived a more orderly life than he
did, though later in life he was suspected to have been too
familiar with one of the vestal virgins, named Licinia, who was,
nevertheless, acquitted, upon an impeachment brought against her
by one Plotinus. Licinia stood possessed of a beautiful property
in the suburbs, which Crassus desiring to purchase at a low price,
for this reason was frequent in his attentions to her, which gave
occasion to the scandal, and his avarice, so to say, serving to
clear him of the crime, he was acquitted. Nor did he leave the
lady till he had got the estate.
People were wont to say that the many virtues of Crassus were
darkened by the one vice of avarice, and indeed he seemed to have
no other but that; for it being the most predominant, obscured
others to which he was inclined. The arguments in proof of his
avarice were the vastness of his estate, and the manner of raising
it; for whereas at first he was not worth above three hundred
talents, yet, though in the course of his political life he
dedicated the tenth of all he had to Hercules, and feasted the
people, and gave to every citizen corn enough to serve him three
months, upon casting up his accounts, before he went upon his
Parthian expedition, he found his possessions to amount to seven
thousand one hundred talents; most of which, if we may scandal him
with a truth, he got by fire and rapine, making his advantages of
the public calamities. For when Sylla seized the city, and
exposed to sale the goods of those that he had caused to be slain,
accounting them booty and spoils, and, indeed, calling them so
too, and was desirous of making as many, and as eminent men as he
could, partakers in the crime, Crassus never was the man that
refused to accept, or give money for them. Moreover observing how
extremely subject the city was to fire, and falling down of
houses, by reason of their height and their standing so near
together, he bought slaves that were builders and architects, and
when he had collected these to the number of more than five
hundred, he made it his practice to buy houses that were on fire,
and those in the neighborhood, which, in the immediate danger and
uncertainty, the proprietors were willing to part with for little,
or nothing; so that the greatest part of Rome, at one time or
other, came into his hands. Yet for all he had so many workmen,
he never built anything but his own house, and used to say that
those that were addicted to building would undo themselves soon
enough without the help of other enemies. And though he had many
silver mines, and much valuable land, and laborers to work in it,
yet all this was nothing in comparison of his slaves, such a
number and variety did he possess of excellent readers,
amanuenses, silversmiths, stewards, and table-waiters, whose
instruction he always attended to himself, superintending in
person while they learned, and teaching them himself, accounting
it the main duty of a master to look over the servants, that are,
indeed, the living tools of housekeeping; and in this, indeed, he
was in the right, in thinking, that is, as he used to say, that
servants ought to look after all other things, and the master
after them. For economy, which in things inanimate is but
money-making when exercised over men becomes policy. But it was
surely a mistaken judgment, when he said no man was to be
accounted rich that could not maintain an army at his own cost and
charges, for war, as Archidamus well observed, is not fed at a
fixed allowance, so that there is no saying what wealth suffices
for it, and certainly it was one very far removed from that of
Marius; for when he had distributed fourteen acres of land a man,
and understood that some desired more, "God forbid," said he,
"that any Roman should think that too little which is enough to
keep him alive and well."
Crassus, however, was very eager to be hospitable to strangers; he
kept open house, and to his friends he would lend money without
interest, but called it in precisely at the time; so that his
kindness was often thought worse than the paying the interest
would have been. His entertainments were, for the most part,
plain and citizenlike, the company general and popular; good taste
and kindness made them pleasanter than sumptuosity would have
done. As for learning, he chiefly cared for rhetoric, and what
would be serviceable with large numbers; he became one of the best
speakers at Rome, and by his pains and industry outdid the best
natural orators. For there was no trial how mean and contemptible
soever that he came to unprepared; nay, several times he undertook
and concluded a cause, when Pompey and Caesar and Cicero refused
to stand up, upon which account particularly he got the love of
the people, who looked upon him as a diligent and careful man,
ready to help and succor his fellow-citizens. Besides, the people
were pleased with his courteous and unpretending salutations and
greetings; for he never met any citizen however humble and low,
but he returned him his salute by name. He was looked upon as a
man well-read in history, and pretty well versed in Aristotle's
philosophy, in which one Alexander instructed him, a man whose
intercourse with Crassus gave a sufficient proof of his
good-nature, and gentle disposition; for it is hard to say whether
he was poorer when he entered into his service, or while he
continued in it; for being his only friend that used to accompany
him when traveling, he used to receive from him a cloak for the
journey, and when he came home had it demanded from him again;
poor patient sufferer, when even the philosophy he professed did
not look upon poverty as a thing indifferent. But of this
hereafter.
When Cinna and Marius got the power in their hands, it was soon
perceived that they had not come back for any good they intended
to their country, but to effect the ruin and utter destruction of
the nobility. And as many as they could lay their hands on they
slew, amongst whom were Crassus's father and brother; he himself,
being very young, for the moment escaped the danger; but
understanding that he was every way beset and hunted after by the
tyrants, taking with him three friends and ten servants, with all
possible speed he fled into Spain, having formerly been there and
secured a great number of friends, while his father was Praetor of
that country. But finding all people in a consternation, and
trembling at the cruelty of Marius, as if he was already standing
over them in person, he durst not discover himself to anybody, but
hid himself in a large cave, which was by the sea-shore, and
belonged to Vibius Pacianus, to whom he sent one of his servants
to sound him, his provisions, also, beginning to fail. Vibius was
well pleased at his escape, and inquiring the place of his abode
and the number of his companions, he went not to him himself, but
commanded his steward to provide every day a good meal's meat, and
carry it and leave it near such a rock, and so return without
taking any further notice or being inquisitive, promising him his
liberty if he did as he commanded, and that he would kill him if
he intermeddled. The cave is not far from the sea; a small and
insignificant looking opening in the cliffs conducts you in; when
you are entered, a wonderfully high roof spreads above you, and
large chambers open out one beyond another, nor does it lack
either water or light, for a very pleasant and wholesome spring
runs at the foot of the cliffs, and natural chinks, in the most