Plutarch
46-119 A.C.E - Wrote in Greek
The Comparison of
Lysander with Sylla
Written 75 A.C.E.
Translated by John Dryden
The Comparison of
Lysander with Sylla
By Plutarch
Having completed this Life also, come we now to the comparison. That which
was common to them both was that they were founders of their own greatness,
with this difference, that Lysander had the consent of his fellow-citizens,
in times of sober judgment, for the honours he received; nor did he force
anything from them against their good-will, nor hold any power contrary
to the laws.
"In civil strife e'en villains rise to fame." And so then at Rome,
when the people were distempered, and the government out of order, one
or other was still raised to despotic power; no wonder, then, if Sylla
reigned, when the Glauciae and Saturnini drove out the Metelli, when sons
of consuls were slain in the assemblies, when silver and gold purchased
men and arms, and fire and sword enacted new laws and put down lawful opposition.
Nor do I blame any one, in such circumstances, for working himself into
supreme power, only I would not have it thought a sign of great goodness
to be head of a state so wretchedly discomposed. Lysander, being employed
in the greatest commands and affairs of state, by a sober and well-governed
city, may be said to have had repute as the best and most virtuous man,
in the best and most virtuous commonwealth. And thus, often returning the
government into the hands of the citizens, he received it again as often,
the superiority of his merit still awarding him the first place. Sylla,
on the other hand, when he had once made himself general of an army, kept
his command for ten years together, creating himself sometimes consul,
sometimes proconsul, and sometimes dictator, but always remaining a
tyrant.
It is true Lysander, as was said, designed to introduce a new form
of government; by milder methods, however, and more agreeable to law than
Sylla, not by force of arms, but persuasion, nor by subverting the whole
state at once, but simply by amending the succession of the kings; in a
way, moreover, which seemed the naturally just one, that the most deserving
should rule, especially in a city which itself exercised command in Greece,
upon account of virtue, not nobility. For as the hunter considers the whelp
itself, not the bitch, and the horsedealer the foal, not the mare (for
what if the foal should prove a mule?), so likewise were that politician
extremely out, who, in the choice of a chief magistrate, should inquire,
not what the man is, but how descended. The very Spartans themselves have
deposed several of their kings for want of kingly virtues, as degenerated
and good for nothing. As a vicious nature, though of an ancient stock,
is dishonourable, it must be virtue itself, and not birth, that makes virtue
honourable. Furthermore, the one committed his acts of injustice for the
sake of his friends; the other extended his to his friends themselves.
It is confessed on all hands, that Lysander offended most commonly for
the sake of his companions, committing several slaughters to uphold their
power and dominion; but as for Sylla, he, out of envy, reduced Pompey's
command by land and Dolabella's by sea, although he himself had given them
those places; and ordered Lucretius Ofella, who sued for the consulship
as the reward of many great services, to be slain before his eyes, exciting
horror and alarm in the minds of all men, by his cruelty to his dearest
friends.
As regards the pursuit of riches and pleasures, we yet further
discover in one a princely, in the other a tyrannical, disposition. Lysander
did nothing that was intemperate or licentious, in that full command of
means and opportunity, but kept clear, as much as ever man did, of that
trite saying-
"Lions at home, but foxes out of doors;" and ever maintained a
sober, truly Spartan, and well-disciplined course of conduct. Whereas Sylla
could never moderate his unruly affections, either by poverty when young,
or by years when grown old, but would be still prescribing laws to the
citizens concerning chastity and sobriety, himself living all that time,
as Sallust affirms, in lewdness and adultery. By these ways he so improverished
and drained the city of her treasures, as to be forced to sell privileges
and immunities to allied and friendly cities for money, although he daily
gave up the wealthiest and the greatest families to public sale and confiscation.
There was no end of his favours vainly spent and thrown away on flatterers;
for what hope could there be, or what likelihood of forethought or economy,
in his more private moments over wine, when, in the open face of the people,
upon the auction of a large estate, which he would have passed over to
one of his friends at a small price, because another bid higher, and the
officer announced the advance, he broke out into a passion, saying: "What
a strange and unjust thing is this, O citizens, that I cannot dispose of
my own booty as I please!" But Lysander, on the contrary, with the rest
of the spoil, sent home for public use even the presents which were made
him. Nor do I comment him for it, for he, perhaps, by excessive liberality,
did Sparta more harm than ever the other did Rome by rapine; I only use
it as an argument of his indifference to riches. They exercised a strange
influence on their respective cities. Sylla, a profuse debauchee, endeavoured
to restore sober living amongst the citizens; Lysander, temperate himself,
filled Sparta with the luxury he disregarded. So that both were blameworthy,
the one for raising himself above his own laws, the other for causing his
fellow-citizens to fall beneath his own example. He taught Sparta to want
the very things which he himself had learned to do without. And thus much
of their civil administration.
As for feats of arms, wise conduct in war, innumerable victories,
perilous adventures, Sylla was beyond compare. Lysander, indeed, came off
twice victorious in two battles by sea; I shall add to that the siege of
Athens, a work of greater fame than difficulty. What occurred in Boeotia,
and at Haliartus, was the result, perhaps, of ill fortune; yet it certainly
looks like ill counsel, not to wait for the king's forces, which had all
but arrived from Plataea, but out of ambition and eagerness to fight, to
approach the walls at disadvantage, and so to be cut off by a sally of
inconsiderable men. He received his death-wound, not as Cleombrotus, at
Leuctra, resisting manfully the assault of an enemy in the field; not as
Cyrus or Epaminondas, sustaining the declining battle, or making sure the
victory; all these died the death of kings and generals; but he, as it
had been some common skirmisher or scout, cast away his life ingloriously,
giving testimony to the wisdom of the ancient Spartan maxim, to avoid attacks
on walled cities, in which the stoutest warrior may chance to fall by the
hand, not only of a man utterly his inferior, but by that of a boy or woman,
as Achilles, they say, was slain by Paris in the gates. As for Sylla, it
were hard to reckon up how many set battles he won, or how many thousand
he slew; he took Rome itself twice, as also the Athenian Piraeus, not by
famine, as Lysander did, but by a series of great battles, driving Archelaus
into the sea. And what is most important, there was a vast difference between
the commanders they had to deal with. For I look upon it as an easy task,
or rather sport, to beat Antiochus, Alcibiades's pilot, or to circumvent
Philocles, the Athenian demagogue-
"Sharp only at the inglorious point of tongue," whom Mithridates
would have scorned to compare with his groom, or Marius with his lictor.
But of the potentates, consuls, commanders, and demagogues, to pass by
all the rest who opposed themselves to Sylla, who amongst the Romans so
formidable as Marius, what king more powerful than Mithridates? who of
the Italians more warlike than Lamponius and Telesinus? yet of these, one
he drove into banishment, one he quelled, and the others he
slew.
And what is more important, in my judgment, than anything yet adduced,
is that Lysander had the assistance of the state in all his achievements;
whereas Sylla, besides that he was a banished person, and overpowered by
a faction, at a time when his wife was driven from home, his houses demolished,
adherents slain, himself then in Boeotia, stood embattled against countless
numbers of the public enemy, and, endangering himself for the sake of his
country, raised a trophy of victory; and not even when Mithridates came
with proposals of alliance and aid against his enemies would he show any
sort of compliance, or even clemency; did not so much as address him, or
vouchsafe him his hand, until he had it from the king's own mouth that
he was willing to quit Asia, surrender the navy, and restore Bithynia and
Cappadocia to the two kings. Than which action Sylla never performed a
braver, or with a nobler spirit, when preferring the public good to the
private, and like good hounds, where he had once fixed, never letting go
his hold, till the enemy yielded, then, and not until then, he set himself
to revenge his own private quarrels. We may perhaps let ourselves be influenced,
moreover, in our comparison of their characters, by considering their treatment
of Athens. Sylla, when he had made himself master of the city, which then
upheld the dominion and power of Mithridates in opposition to him, restored
her to liberty and the free exercise of her own laws; Lysander, on the
contrary, when she had fallen from a vast height of dignity and rule, showed
her no compassion, but abolishing her democratic government, imposed on
her the most cruel and lawless tyrants. We are now qualified to consider
whether we should go far from the truth or no in pronouncing that Sylla
performed the more glorious deeds, but Lysander committed the fewer faults,
as, likewise, by giving to one the pre-eminence for moderation and self-control,
to the other for conduct and valour.
THE END
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