PELOPIDAS.

Coin of Thebes.

CATO the Elder, hearing some people commending a man who was rash, and inconsiderately daring in battle, said, there was a difference between a man's prizing valour at a great rate, and valuing life at little; a very just remark. Antigonus, we know, had a soldier, a venturous fellow, but of wretched health and constitution; the reason of whose ill looks he took the trouble to inquire into; and, on understanding from him that it was a disease, directed his physicians to employ their utmost skill, and if possible recover him; which brave hero, when once cured, never afterwards sought danger or did any desperate deed in battle; and, when Antigonus wondered and upbraided him with his change, made no secret of the reason, and said, "Sir, you are the cause of my cowardice, by having freed me from those miseries which made me care little for life." With the same feeling, the Sybarite seems to have said of the Spartans, that it was no great merit in them to be so ready to die in the wars, since by that they were re

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leased from such hard labour and miserable living. And certainly the soft and dissolute Sybarites might very well imagine that the Lacedæmonians hated life, because in their eager pursuit of virtue and glory they were not afraid to die but the truth is, they found their virtue secure them satisfaction alike in living or in dying; as we see in the epitaph,—

They died, but not as lavish of their blood,
Or thinking death itself was simply good;
Their wishes neither were to live nor die,
But to do both alike commendably.

Avoiding death is not wrong, if our desires for life are honourable, nor is willingness to die virtuous, if it proceeds from a contempt of life. Homer always brings his bravest and most daring heroes well-armed into battle; and the Greek lawgivers punished those that threw away their shields, not him that lost his sword or spear; intimating that defence rather than offence is a man's duty, and more particularly a commander's, whether of a city or an army.

For if, as Iphicrates divides it out, the light-armed are the hands, the horse the feet, the infantry the chest, and the general the head, he, when he puts himself upon danger, not only ventures his own person, but all those whose safety depends on his; and so on the contrary. Callicratidas therefore, though otherwise a great man, was wrong in his answer to the diviner who advised him, the sacrifice being unlucky, to be careful of his life; "Sparta," said he, " will not miss one man." It was true, Callicratidas, when simply serving in any engagement either at sea or land, was but a single person, but as general, he united in his life the lives of all,

and could hardly be called one, when his death involved the ruin of so many. The saying of old Antigonus was better, who, when he was to fight at Andros, and one told him, "The enemy's ships are more than ours;" replied, "For how many then wilt thou reckon me?" intimating how highly a brave and experienced commander is to be rated; one of the first duties of whose office it is to save the person on whose safety that of others depends. And therefore I applaud Timotheus, who, when Chares showed the scars on his body, and his shield driven through by a lance, remarked, "Yet how ashamed I was, at the siege of Samos, when a dart fell near me, for exposing myself, more like a boy than like a general in command of a large army." Indeed, where the general's hazarding himself will go far to decide the result, there he must fight and venture his person, and not mind their maxims, who would have a general die, if not of, at least in old age; but when the advantage will be but small if he prospers, and the loss fatal if he falls, who then would desire, at the risk of the commander's life, a piece of success which a common soldier might obtain? Thus much I thought fit to premise in reference to the lives of Pelopidas and Marcellus*, who were both great men, but who both fell by their own rashness. For, being gallant in action, and having gained their respective countries great glory and advantage in their conduct of war against the most formidable enemies (the one, as it is related, first defeating Hannibal, who was till then invincible; the other in a set battle beating the Lacedæmonians, then

* With whom Plutarch compares him among the Romans.