The Comparison of Pelopidas with Marcellus   

and strangeness of their ends gives me a feeling rather of pain and
distress. Hannibal has my admiration who, in so many severe conflicts,
more than can be reckoned in one day, never received so much as one
wound. I honour Chrysantes also (in Xenophon's Cyropaedia), who, having
raised his sword in the act of striking his enemy, so soon as a retreat
was sounded, left him, and retired sedately and modestly. Yet the
anger which provoked Pelopidas to pursue revenge in the heat of fight
may excuse him.
"The first thing for a captain is to gain
Safe victory; the next to be with honour slain," as Euripides says.
For then he cannot be said to suffer death; it is rather to be called
an action. The very object, too, of Pelopidas's victory, which consisted
in the slaughter of the tyrant, presenting itself to his eyes, did
not wholly carry him away unadvisedly: he could not easily expect
again to have another equally glorious occasion for the exercise of
his courage in a noble and honourable cause. But Marcellus, when it
made little to his advantage, and when no such violent ardour as present
danger naturally calls out transported him to passion, throwing himself
into danger, fell to an unexplored ambush; he, namely, who had borne
five consulates, led three triumphs, won the spoils and glories of
kings and victories, to act the part of a mere scout, or sentinel,
and to expose all his achievements to be trod under foot by the mercenary
Spaniards and Numidians, who sold themselves and their lives to the
Carthaginians, so that even they themselves felt unworthy, and almost
grudged themselves the unhoped-for success of having cut off, among
a few Fregellan scouts, the most valiant, the most potent, and most
renowned of the Romans. Let no man think that we have thus spoken
out of a design to accuse these noble men; it is merely an expression
of frank indignation in their own behalf, at seeing them thus wasting
all their other virtues upon that of bravery, and throwing away their
lives, as if the loss would be only felt by themselves, and not by
their country, allies, and friends.
After Pelopidas's death, his friends, for whom he died, made a funeral
for him; the enemies, by whom he had been killed, made one for Marcellus.
A noble and happy lot indeed the former; yet there is something higher
and greater in the admiration rendered by enemies to the virtue that
had been their own obstacle, than in the grateful acknowledgments
of friends. Since, in the one case, it is virtue alone that challenges
itself the honour; while, in the other, it may be rather men's personal
profit and advantage that is the real origin of what they do.
THE END