If he
were so sensitive on the point of honour, he ought to have made a
stand at the very beginning, and fought a battle in defence of Rome,
not first to have retreated, giving out that he was acting with a
subtlety worthy of Themistokles himself, and then to have regarded
every day spent in Thessaly without fighting as a disgrace. The plain
of Pharsalia was not specially appointed by heaven as the arena in
which he was to contend with Caesar for the empire of the world, nor
was he summoned by the voice of a herald either to fight or to avow
himself vanquished. There were many plains, and innumerable cities and
countries which his command of the sea would have enabled him to
reach, if he had wished to imitate Fabius Maximus, Marius, Lucullus,
or Agesilaus himself, who resisted the same kind of clamour at Sparta,
when his countrymen wished to fight the Thebans and protect their
native land; while in Egypt he endured endless reproaches, abuse, and
suspicion from Nektanebis because he forbade him to fight, and by
consistently carrying out his own judicious policy saved the Egyptians
against their will. He not only guided Sparta safely through that
terrible crisis, but was enabled to win a victory over the Thebans in
the city itself, which he never could have done had he yielded to the
entreaties of the Lacedaemonians to fight when their country was first
invaded. Thus it happened that Agesilaus was warmly praised by those
whose opinions he had overruled, while Pompeius made mistakes to
please his friends, and afterwards was reproached by them for what he
had done.
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