The Comparison of Pompey with Agesilaus   

he summoned thither by any herald upon challenge, with intimation
that he must either undergo the combat or surrender the prize to another.
There were many other fields, thousands of cities, and even the whole
earth placed at his command, by the advantage of his fleet and his
superiority at sea, if he would but have followed the examples of
Maximus, Marius, Lucullus, and even Agesilaus himself, who endured
no less tumults within the city of Sparta, when the Thebans provoked
him to come out and fight in defence of the land, and sustained in
Egypt also numerous calumnies, slanders, and suspicions on the part
of the king, whom he counselled to abstain from a battle. And thus
following always what he had determined in his own judgment upon mature
advice, by that means he not only preserved the Egyptians against
their wills, not only kept Sparta, in those desperate convulsions,
by his sole act, safe from overthrow, but even was able to set up
trophies likewise in the city over the Thebans, having given his countrymen
an occasion of being victorious afterwards by not at first leading
them out, as they tried to force him to do, to their own destruction.
The consequence was that in the end Agesilaus was commended by the
very men, when they found themselves saved, upon whom he had put this
compulsion, whereas Pompey, whose error had been occasioned by others,
found those his accusers whose advice had misled him. Some indeed
profess that he was deceived by his father-in-law Scipio, who, designing
to conceal and keep to himself the greatest part of that treasure
which he had brought out of Asia, pressed Pompey to battle, upon the
pretence that there would be a want of money. Yet admitting he was
deceived, one in his place ought not to have been so, nor should have
allowed so slight an artifice to cause the hazard of such mighty interests.
And thus we have taken a view of each, by comparing together their
conduct and actions in war.
As to their voyages into Egypt, one steered his course thither out
of necessity in flight; the other neither honourably, nor of necessity,
but as a mercenary soldier, having enlisted himself into the service
of a barbarous nation for pay, that he might be able afterwards to
wage war upon the Greeks. And secondly, what we charge upon the Egyptians
in the name of Pompey, the Egyptians lay to the charge of Agesilaus.
Pompey trusted them and was betrayed and murdered by them; Agesilaus
accepted their confidence and deserted them, transferring his aid
to the very enemies who were now attacking those whom he had been
brought over to assist.
THE END