On the other hand, we have no
specimen of the political ingenuity of Pompeius which can be compared
with that admirable device of Agesilaus, when he readmitted the
survivors of the battle of Leuktra to the privileges of Spartan
citizens, by permitting the laws to sleep for one day. Pompeius did
not even think it his duty to abide by the laws which he had himself
enacted, but broke them to prove his great power to his friends.
Agesilaus, when forced either to abolish the laws or to ruin his
friends, discovered an expedient by which the laws did his friends no
hurt, and yet had not to be abolished in order to save them. I also
place to the credit of Agesilaus that unparalleled act of obedience,
when on receiving a despatch from Sparta he abandoned the whole of his
Asian enterprise. For Agesilaus did not, like Pompeius, enrich the
state by his own exploits, but looking solely to the interests of his
country, he gave up a position of greater glory and power than any
Greek before or since ever held, with the single exception of
Alexander.
III. Looking at them from another point of view, I suppose that even
Xenophon himself would not think of comparing the number of the
victories won by Pompeius, the size of the armies which he commanded,
and that of those which he defeated, with any of the victories of
Agesilaus; although Xenophon has written so admirably upon other
subjects, that he seems to think himself privileged to say whatever he
pleases about the life of his favourite hero.
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