The Comparison of Pompey with Agesilaus   

in which he triumphed, I am persuaded even Xenophon himself would
not put the victories of Agesilaus in balance with his, though Xenophon
has this privilege allowed him, as a sort of special reward for his
other excellences, that he may write and speak, in favour of his hero,
whatever he pleases. Methinks, too, there is a great deal of difference
betwixt these men in their clemency and moderation towards their enemies.
For Agesilaus, while attempting to enslave Thebes and exterminate
Messene, the latter, his country's ancient associate, and Thebes,
the mother-city of his own royal house, almost lost Sparta itself,
and did really lose the government of Greece; whereas Pompey gave
cities to those of the pirates who were willing to change their manner
of life; and when it was in his power to lead Tigranes, King of Armenia,
in triumph, he chose rather to make him a confederate of the Romans,
saying, that a single day was worth less than all future time. But
if the pre-eminence in that which relates to the office and virtues
of a general should be determined by the greatest and most important
acts and counsels of war, the Lacedaemonian would not a little exceed
the Roman. For Agesilaus never deserted his city, though it was besieged
by an army of seventy thousand men, when there were very few soldiers
within to defend it, and those had been defeated too, but a little
before, at the battle of Leuctra. But Pompey, when Caesar, with a
body only of fifty-three hundred men, had taken but one town in Italy,
departed in a panic out of Rome, either through cowardice, when there
were so few, or at least through a false and mistaken belief that
there were more; and having conveyed away his wife and children, he
left all the rest of the citizens defenceless, and fled; whereas he
ought either to have conquered in fight for the defence of his country,
or yielded upon terms to the conqueror, who was, moreover, his fellow-citizen
and allied to him; but now to the same man to whom he refused a prolongation
of the terms of his government, and thought it intolerable to grant
another consulship, to him he gave the power, by letting him take
the city, to tell Metellus, together with all the rest, that they
were his prisoners.
That which is chiefly the office of a general, to force the enemy
into fighting when he finds himself the stronger, and to avoid being
driven into it himself when he is the weaker, this excellence Agesilaus
always displayed, and by it kept himself invincible; whereas in contending
with Pompey, Caesar, who was the weaker, successfully declined the
danger, and his own strength being in his land-forces, drove him into
putting the conflict to issue with these, and thus made himself master
of the treasure, stores, and the sea too, which were all in his enemy's
hands, and by the help of which the victory could have been secured
without fighting. And what is alleged as an apology in vindication
of Pompey, is to a general of his age and standing the greatest of
disgraces. For, granting that a young commander might by clamour and
outcry be deprived of his fortitude and strength of mind, and weakly
forsake his better judgment, and the thing be neither strange nor
altogether unpardonable, yet for Pompey the Great, whose camp the
Romans called their country, and his tent the senate, styling the
consuls, praetors, and all other magistrates who were conducting the
government at Rome by no better title than that of rebels and traitors,
for him, whom they well knew never to have been under the command
of any but himself, having served all his campaigns under himself
as sole general, for him upon so small a provocation as the scoffs
of Favonius and Domitius, and lest he should bear the nickname of
Agamemnon, to be wrought upon, and even forced to hazard the whole
empire and liberty of Rome upon the cast of a die, was surely indeed
intolerable. Who, if he had so much regarded a present infamy, should
have guarded the city at first with his arms, and fought the battle
in defence of Rome, not have left it as he did: nor while declaring
his flight from Italy an artifice in the manner of Themistocles, nevertheless
be ashamed in Thessaly of a prudent delay before engaging. Heaven
had not appointed the Pharsalian fields to be the stage and theatre
upon which they should contend for the empire of Rome, neither was