The Comparison of Lysander with Sylla   

greatest families to public sale and confiscation. There was no end
of his favours 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 comment 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, endeavoured 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
thousand 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 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, 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