Secondly, Pompeius both respected Sulla while he lived, gave his body
an honourable burial, in spite of Lepidus, when he died, and married
Sulla's daughter to his own son Faustus; while Agesilaus, on a
trifling pretext, disgraced and ruined Lysander. Yet Sulla gave
Pompeius nothing more than he possessed himself, whereas Lysander made
Agesilaus king of Sparta, and leader of the united armies of Greece.
Thirdly, the political wrong-doings of Pompeius were chiefly committed
to serve his relatives, Caesar and Scipio; while Agesilaus saved
Sphodrias from the death which he deserved for his outrage upon the
Athenians merely to please his son, and vigorously supported Phoebidas
when he committed a similar breach of the peace against the Thebans.
And generally, we may say that while Pompeius only injured the Romans
through inability to refuse the demands of friends, or through
ignorance, Agesilaus ruined the Lacedaemonians by plunging them into
war with Thebes, to gratify his own angry and quarrelsome temper.
II. If it be right to attribute the disasters which befel either of
those men to some special ill-luck which attended them, the Romans had
no reason whatever to suspect any such thing of Pompeius; but
Agesilaus, although the Lacedaemonians well knew the words of the
oracle, yet would not allow them to avoid "a lame reign." Even if
Leotychides had been proved a thousand times to be a bastard, the
family of Eurypon could have supplied Sparta with a legitimate and
sound king, had not Lysander, for the sake of Agesilaus, deceived them
as to the true meaning of the oracle.
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