Regum Et Imperatorum Apophthegmata

Plutarch · a new plain-English translation from the Greek

Artaxerxes, king of the Persians, most mighty imperator Caesar Trajan, thought it no less kingly and humane a thing to receive small gifts graciously and eagerly than to give great ones; for when he was riding along the road and a common laborer, a private man who had nothing else, scooped up water from the river in both hands and offered it to him, he received it gladly and smiled, measuring the gift by the giver's eagerness and not by the usefulness of what was given.

Lycurgus made the sacrifices at Sparta very inexpensive, so that the Spartans might always be able to honor the gods readily and easily from whatever they had at hand. It is in some such spirit that I too now offer you simple gifts and guest-tokens, common firstfruits from philosophy; and along with the eagerness, please accept also the usefulness of these memorable sayings, if indeed they provide

some standard for understanding the characters and the guiding purposes of leading men, since these are revealed more clearly in their words than in their deeds. And yet this collection also contains Lives of the most illustrious among both Romans and Greeks — commanders, lawgivers, and emperors. But most of their actions have chance mixed into them, whereas the things that occur alongside their deeds and their passions and

their fortunes — declarations and exclamations — as though in mirrors, present each man's mind for clear observation. It was for this reason too that Seiramnes the Persian, to those who marveled that although his words showed good sense, his actions did not turn out well, said that he himself was master of his words, but that fortune, together with the king, was master of his actions. There, then, the declarations of these men, together

with their corresponding actions placed beside them, wait for a listener with leisure to spare; but here the sayings themselves, gathered by themselves, like samples and seeds of their lives, will, I think, cause you no trouble in the reading, since in brief compass you get a review of many men worthy of remembrance. The Persians are fond of griffins, because Cyrus, who was the most beloved of their kings, had a hooked, griffin-like appearance. Cyrus used to say

that men force others to provide good things for them when they are unwilling to provide them for themselves, and that it belongs to no one to rule who is not better than those he rules. When the Persians wished to exchange their own mountainous and rugged land for a level and soft country, he did not allow it, saying that both the seeds of plants and the lives of men grow to resemble the lands they live in. Darius, the father of Xerxes,

used to praise himself by saying that in battles and amid dangers he became more prudent. Having set the tribute for his subjects, he summoned the leading men of the provinces and asked them about the tribute, whether it was oppressive; and when they said it was moderate, he ordered each to pay only half. And once, having opened a large pomegranate, when someone asked him what he would wish to have in such quantity as the number of its seeds,

he said, "Men like Zopyrus" — for Zopyrus was a good man and a friend of his. And when Zopyrus mutilated himself, cutting off his own nose and ears, and thereby deceived the Babylonians and, being trusted by them, handed the city over to Darius, Darius often said he would not wish to have a hundred Babylons at the price of not having Zopyrus whole. Semiramis, for her part,

had a tomb built for herself and inscribed on it, "Whatever king has need of money, let him open this monument and take as much as he wishes." So Darius opened it, but found no money; instead he came upon other writing which said, "If you were not an evil man and insatiable for money, you would not have disturbed the resting places of the dead." When Ariamenes, the brother of Xerxes son of Darius, was disputing with him over the kingship, he was coming down from Bactria;

so Xerxes sent him gifts, ordering those who delivered them to say, "With these Xerxes your brother honors you now; but if he is proclaimed king, you shall be greatest of all in his court." And when Xerxes was declared king, Ariamenes at once did obeisance to him and put the diadem on him, and Xerxes in turn gave him the rank second after himself. Angered at the Babylonians when they revolted, and having overpowered them, he ordered

that they should carry no weapons, but should play the harp and the flute, keep brothels, run taverns, and wear robes with folds like women's garments. He said he would not eat Attic dried figs brought to him for sale, but only when he had won the land that produces them. When he caught Greek spies in his camp, he did them no harm, but ordered them to be shown the army freely and then let them go. Artaxerxes son of Xerxes, called Longhand because his

one hand was longer than the other, used to say that it was more kingly to add than to take away; and he was the first to order that, among those hunting with him, whoever was willing and able should throw the first spear. He was also the first to establish a punishment for offending officials that, instead of having their bodies whipped and their heads plucked bald, they should be whipped after removing their garments, and have their tiaras removed instead of having their hair plucked. When he learned that Satibarzanes, his chamberlain, had asked

him for something unjust, and discovered that he had done this for thirty thousand darics, he ordered his treasurer to bring thirty thousand darics; and giving them to him he said, "Take these, Satibarzanes; for by giving them I shall not be poorer, but by doing what you asked I would have become more unjust." Cyrus the Younger, urging the Spartans to be his allies, said that his brother had a heavier heart, could drink more unmixed wine than he,

and bore it better; but that his brother could scarcely stay on his horse when hunting, and in dangers could not even stay on his throne. He urged them to send men to him, promising to give horses to those who came on foot, chariots to those with horses, villages to those who owned land, and to make masters of cities those who owned villages; and as for silver and gold, he promised there would be no counting it,

only weighing. Artaxerxes, the brother of this man, called Mnemon, not only made himself freely accessible to all who approached him, but also ordered his lawful wife to have the curtains of her carriage removed, so that those with requests might approach her along the road. When a poor man brought him an apple of extraordinary size, he received it gladly and said, "By Mithras, this man seems to me

capable, if entrusted with a small city, of making it great." And once, in a certain flight, when his baggage had been plundered, he ate dried figs and barley bread and said, "What pleasure I had never known!" Parysatis, the mother of Cyrus and Artaxerxes, used to tell anyone who was about to speak frankly to the king to use words of fine linen. Orontes, son-in-law of King Artaxerxes, having fallen into disgrace through the king's anger and been condemned, said

that just as the fingers of accountants can represent now tens of thousands, now single units, so too the friends of kings can at one time have all power and at another the least. Memnon, who fought against Alexander on behalf of King Darius, struck with his spear a mercenary soldier who was speaking many abusive and insolent things about Alexander, and said, "I feed you to fight,

not to abuse Alexander." The kings of Egypt, by their own law, made their judges swear an oath that even if the king should order them to render some unjust judgment, they would not render it. Poltys, king of the Thracians, at the time of the Trojan War, when envoys came to him from both the Trojans and the Achaeans together, told Alexander (Paris) that he should give back Helen and take from him two beautiful women instead. Teres, father of Sitalces,

used to say that whenever he was at leisure and not on campaign, he thought he differed in no way from his own grooms. Cotys, in return for a gift of a leopard, gave back a lion. Being by nature quick to anger and a harsh punisher of those who erred in his service, when a stranger once brought him fragile and delicate earthenware vessels, cleverly and exquisitely worked with carvings and engravings, he gave gifts to the stranger, but the vessels

he smashed all of them, saying, "So that I may not, out of anger, punish more harshly those who break them." Idanthyrsus, king of the Scythians, against whom Darius crossed the river, tried to persuade the tyrants of the Ionians to break the bridge over the Ister and depart; and when they were unwilling to do so, out of loyalty to Darius, he called them good and unresisting slaves. Anteas wrote to Philip, "You rule the Macedonians, men trained to make war on

men; but I rule the Scythians, who can also fight hunger and thirst." When Philip's envoys came to him, he was currycombing his own horse and asked them, "Does Philip do this too?" And when he took Ismenias, the finest flute-player, captive, he ordered him to play the flute; and when the others marveled at the playing, he himself swore that he found more pleasure in hearing his horse neigh. Scyluros, who left behind eighty sons,

when he was about to die, held out a bundle of javelins to each of them and told them to break it; and when all of them gave up, he himself drew out the javelins one by one and easily broke every one, teaching them thereby that as long as they stood together they would remain strong, but if they broke apart and fell into faction they would be weak. Gelon the tyrant, when he had defeated the Carthaginians in war, in making peace with them forced them to write into the treaty that they would also stop sacrificing their children to Cronus. He often led the Syracusans out, as though on campaign,

but really to planting, so that the land might be improved through cultivation and the men themselves not grow worse through idleness. And when he asked money from the citizens and they raised an uproar, he told them to ask for it back as a loan to be repaid, and he repaid it after the war. Once at a banquet, when the lyre was being passed around and the others in turn tuned it and sang, he ordered his horse brought in and leapt lightly and easily onto it. Hiero, who

was tyrant after Gelon, used to say that no one who spoke frankly to him was ever untimely in doing so. He thought that those who divulged a secret wronged not only themselves but also those to whom they divulged it; for we hate not only those who reveal things but also those who hear what we do not wish revealed. When someone reproached him for the bad smell of his mouth, he blamed his wife for never having told him of it; and she said,

"I thought that all men smelled that way." To Xenophanes of Colophon, who said that he could scarcely support two servants, he replied, "But Homer, whom you disparage, supports more than ten thousand even though he is dead." He fined Epicharmus the comic poet because he had said something indecent in the presence of Hiero's own wife. Dionysius the Elder, when the public speakers were being chosen by lot according to letter, and the letter M fell to him,

when someone said, "You talk foolishly, Dionysius" (using a word beginning with M), replied, "No, I shall be a monarch" (also beginning with M); and having spoken publicly he was immediately chosen general by the Syracusans. And when at the beginning of his tyranny he was under siege, the citizens having risen up against him, his friends advised him to give up his power, if he did not wish to be killed after being overpowered; but when he saw an ox being slaughtered quickly by a butcher and falling, he said, "Is it not shameful

that we, fearing a death so brief, should abandon so great a power out of fear?" And when he learned that his son, to whom he intended to leave his rule, had seduced the wife of a free man, he asked him angrily what he was conscious of that had made him do such a thing; and when the young man said, "You did not have a tyrant for a father," he replied, "Nor will you have a son, unless you stop doing such things." Again, when he went in to see him

and saw a great quantity of gold and silver cups, he cried out, "There is no tyrant in you, since with the very cups you take from me you have made no friend for yourself." When he was exacting money from the Syracusans, and then saw them wailing and begging and saying they had none, he ordered other demands made of them, and did this two or three times; but when, after imposing still more, he heard

that they were laughing and joking as they went about the marketplace, he ordered it stopped, saying, "Now they have nothing, since they hold us in contempt." When his mother, past marriageable age, wished to be given to a husband, he said that he could compel the laws of the city, but not the laws of nature. Though he punished other wrongdoers harshly, he spared the cutpurses, so that the Syracusans

might stop dining and getting drunk together. When a certain stranger claimed he would tell him privately, and teach him, how to foreknow those who plotted against him, he told him to speak; and when the man came forward and said, "Give me a talent, so that you may seem to have heard the signs of the plotters," he gave it, pretending he had heard something and marveling at the man's method. To one who asked whether he had any leisure he said, "May that never happen to me."

And when he heard that two young men, over their wine, had said many abusive things about him and about his tyranny, he invited both to dinner; and seeing that one grew drunk and talkative, while the other drank sparingly and cautiously, he released the first as one who had spoken badly through drunkenness by nature, but put to death the second as ill-disposed and hostile by deliberate choice. When some

blamed him for honoring and advancing a wicked man who was disliked by the citizens, he said, "But I actually want the man who is hated more than I am." And when envoys from Corinth, to whom he was offering gifts, declined them on account of the law which did not allow envoys to accept gifts from a ruler, he said they were doing a terrible thing, in doing away with the one good thing tyrannies have, and teaching

that even to be well treated by a tyrant is a fearful thing. Hearing that one of his citizens had gold buried at home, he ordered him to bring it to him; and when the man secretly kept back a little and, moving to another city, bought a piece of land with it, Dionysius summoned him and ordered him to take back the whole amount, since he had begun to make use of his wealth and no longer rendered the useful useless. Dionysius the Younger used to say

that he supported many sophists, not because he admired them, but because he wished to be admired through them. When Polyxenus the dialectician said he refuted him, he replied, "To be sure, in words; but I refute you in deeds — for having abandoned your own affairs, you attend to me and to mine." After he fell from power, to one who asked him, "What good did Plato and philosophy do you?" he said,

"That I bear so great a change of fortune easily." And when asked how it was that his father, though poor and a private citizen, acquired the rule of Syracuse, while he himself, though he had it and was the son of a tyrant, lost it, he said, "My father entered upon his course of action when democracy was hated, but I when tyranny was envied." And when someone else asked him the same question, he said, "My father

left me his own tyranny, but not his own fortune." Agathocles was the son of a potter, and when he became master of Sicily and was proclaimed king, he used to have earthenware cups set out alongside the golden ones, and would show them to the young men, saying that by such humble work as he had once done he had now achieved such things, through diligence and courage. And once, while he was besieging a city, some of the men on the wall taunted him, saying, "O potter,

"How will you pay the soldiers' wages?" And he answered gently, smiling, "Whenever I take this city." When he had taken it by force he sold the captives, and said, "If you abuse me again, I shall have to take the matter up with your masters." When the sailors of the Ithacans complained that his men, landing on their island, had carried off some of their livestock, he said, "Why, your own king came to us once, and not only took our sheep but blinded the shepherd besides."

Dion, who had driven Dionysius out of his tyranny, on hearing that Callippus — the man he trusted most among his friends and guests — was plotting against him, could not bring himself to put him to the test, saying it was better to die than to live guarding oneself not only against enemies but against friends.

Archelaus, asked at a drinking party by one of his companions — a man agreeable enough but not exactly refined — for a golden cup, ordered his slave to give it to Euripides instead. When the man expressed surprise, Archelaus said, "You are fit to ask, but he is fit to receive even without asking." When a chattering barber asked him, "How shall I cut your hair?" he replied, "In silence." When Euripides, at a banquet, embraced and kissed the handsome Agathon, who by then had a beard,

Archelaus said to his friends, "Do not be surprised — for even the autumn of the beautiful is beautiful." When Timotheus the singer to the lyre, having hoped for more and received less, showed plainly that he held it against him, and once, singing a certain little song with the words "and you praise earth-born silver," aimed the jibe at him, Archelaus struck back at him: "And you ask for it." And when someone once splashed water on him,

and his friends urged him to be angry at the man, he said, "No — he did not splash it on me, but on the man he took me to be." Theophrastus records of Philip, father of Alexander, that he surpassed the other kings not only in fortune but also in character, being more moderate than they. He used to say that the Athenians were fortunate, since they could find ten generals every year;

for he himself, in all his many years, had found only one general — Parmenio. When many successes and fine achievements were reported to him all in a single day, he said, "O Fortune, do me some small ill in return for so many and so great goods." And when, after defeating the Greeks, some advised him to hold the cities with garrisons, he said he preferred to be called a good man for a long time rather than a master for a short one.

When his friends urged him to banish a slanderer, he refused, saying he did not want the man going about elsewhere speaking ill of him. When Smicythus accused Nicanor of always speaking ill of Philip, and his companions thought he should be summoned and punished, Philip said, "But surely Nicanor is not the worst of the Macedonians; we must look into it, in case the fault lies with us." So when he learned that

Nicanor was hard pressed by poverty and had been neglected by him, he ordered that a gift be given to him. And when Smicythus again reported that Nicanor now went about praising him wonderfully to everyone, Philip said, "You see, then, that it lies with ourselves whether we are spoken well of or ill." He said he was grateful to the popular leaders of the Athenians, because by abusing him

they made him a better man, both in speech and in character: "for I try to prove them liars in both my words and my deeds at once." When those Athenians who had been captured at Chaeronea were released by him without ransom, but then demanded back their cloaks and bedding as well and complained to the Macedonians about it, Philip laughed and said, "Do the Athenians not think that they have been beaten by us at dice?"

When his collarbone was broken in war, and the attending doctor kept asking for something every day, he said, "Take whatever you like — you hold the key." Of two brothers, Amphoterus and Hecaterus, seeing that Hecaterus was sensible and capable while Amphoterus was foolish and dull, he said that Hecaterus was "both," and Amphoterus was "neither."

He said that those who advised him to treat the Athenians harshly were absurd, since they were urging a man who did everything and suffered everything for the sake of reputation to throw away the very theater of that reputation. Called on once to judge between two scoundrels, he ordered the one to flee Macedonia and the other to pursue him. When he was about to encamp in a fine spot and learned there was no fodder for the pack animals, he said,

"Such is our life — must we live even by the schedule of donkeys?" Wishing to take a certain stronghold, and being told by his scouts that it was altogether difficult and impregnable, he asked whether it was so difficult that not even a donkey laden with gold could approach it. When the followers of Lasthenes of Olynthus complained and grew angry that some of Philip's men called them traitors,

he said that Macedonians were by nature blunt and rustic, and called a spade a spade. He advised his son to deal graciously with the Macedonians, winning for himself the goodwill of the many, while it was still possible to be kindly toward them under another's rule as king. He advised that among the men of power in the cities one should acquire both the good as friends and the bad as well, and then make use of the one

and use up the other. To Philo the Theban, who had been his benefactor and host when he lived in Thebes as a hostage, and who later would accept no gift from him in return, he said, "Do not deprive me of the one thing I cannot be beaten in — being overcome by kindness and gratitude." When many captives had been taken, he sold them sitting there himself, his tunic drawn up in an unseemly way; one of those being sold cried out, "Spare me, Philip,

for I am your father's friend." When Philip asked, "How did that come about, and how, my good man?" the man said, "Come closer, I want to tell you privately." So when he was brought near, he said, "Pull your cloak down a little lower — you are sitting indecently like that." And Philip said, "Let him go, for he really was well-disposed and a friend all along, unnoticed." Once, invited to dinner by a stranger,

he brought many companions along the way, and seeing his host flustered because the preparations were not enough, he went ahead of his friends and told each of them to leave room for the cake course; and they, obeying and expecting it, ate little, and so there was enough for everyone. When Hipparchus of Euboea died, Philip was clearly grieved, and when someone said, "But surely he died in the prime of life," Philip answered, "For himself, yes,

but for me too soon — for he died before I could repay him a gratitude worthy of our friendship." Learning that Alexander held it against him that he was fathering children by several women, he said, "Well then, since you will have many rivals for the kingship, prove yourself noble and good, so that you may win the kingdom not through me but through yourself." He also urged Alexander to attend to Aristotle and study philosophy,

"so that," he said, "you may not do many of the things which I now regret having done." When he had appointed one of Antipater's friends to be a judge, and then noticed that the man dyed his beard and his hair, he removed him from office, saying that a man not to be trusted in his hair should not be considered trustworthy in his affairs. Once, judging a case brought by a certain Machaetas, and dozing off, he did not pay full attention to what was just and condemned the man; and when Machaetas

cried out that he was appealing the verdict, Philip, angered, said, "To whom?" And Machaetas said, "To you yourself, O king — if you will listen wide awake and paying attention." At the time Philip got up and left it there; but afterward, being more himself and realizing that Machaetas had been wronged, he did not overturn the verdict, but paid the fine of the judgment himself. When Harpalus, on behalf of his kinsman and relative Crates, who was on trial

for wrongdoing, asked that the penalty be paid so that Crates might be released from the trial and not be reviled, Philip said, "It is better that this man himself, rather than we, be spoken ill of on his account." When his friends grew indignant that the Peloponnesians, who had received good treatment from him, hissed him at the Olympic games, he said, "What then, if they should suffer ill?" Having slept a long while on campaign and then risen, he said, "I slept safely, for Antipater

was keeping watch." And again, when he was sleeping by day and the Greeks gathered at his doors grew indignant and complained, Parmenio said, "Do not be surprised that Philip is sleeping now — for while you were sleeping, this man was awake." When a lyre-player at dinner wished to correct him and lecture him about music, the player said, "May it never happen to you, O king, to fare so badly

that you should know these matters better than I do." When he had quarreled with his wife Olympias and his son, and Demaratus of Corinth arrived, Philip asked him how the Greeks stood with one another; and Demaratus said, "You are certainly well placed to talk about the harmony of the Greeks, when your own household stands like this toward you." Philip, taking the point, put aside his anger and was reconciled with

them. When a poor old woman insisted on having her case judged by him personally and kept pestering him, he said he had no time; and the old woman cried out, "Then do not be king either." He was so struck by what she said that he heard not only her case but everyone else's at once. Alexander, while still a boy, took no joy in Philip's many successes, but said to the boys raised with him, "My father

will leave nothing for me." And when the boys said, "But he is winning all this for you," he answered, "What good is it if I have much but achieve nothing?" Being light and swift of foot, and urged by his father to run the sprint at Olympia, he said, "Only if I were to have kings as my rivals." When a slave girl was brought to him late one evening to spend the night with him, he asked her,

"why so late?" And when she said, "I was waiting for my husband to go to bed," he sharply rebuked his attendants, as having very nearly made him an adulterer through their fault. When he was burning incense to the gods lavishly and taking great handfuls of frankincense, Leonidas his tutor, who was present, said, "You may burn incense so extravagantly, my boy, once you have conquered the land that produces it." So when he had conquered it, he sent Leonidas a letter: "I have sent you a hundred talents

of frankincense and cassia, so that you need no longer be stingy toward the gods, knowing that we now hold the land that bears these spices too." When he was about to fight the battle at the Granicus, he urged the Macedonians to dine without stint and bring everything out into the open, since tomorrow they would be dining on the enemy's provisions. When a certain Perillus, one of his friends, asked for a dowry for his little daughters, he ordered fifty talents given to him; and when Perillus said

ten would be enough, Alexander said, "Enough for you to receive, perhaps, but not enough for me to give." He instructed his treasurer to give Anaxarchus the philosopher whatever he might ask; and when the treasurer reported that he was asking for a hundred talents, Alexander said, "He does well to ask, since he knows he has a friend both able and willing to give such a sum." At Miletus, having seen many statues of athletes who had won at Olympia and Delphi,

he said, "And where were such bodies as these when the barbarians were besieging your city?" When Ada, the queen of the Carians, kept sending him, out of her eagerness to please, dainties and pastries prepared with extravagant care by her own cooks and bakers, he said that he had better cooks of his own: for breakfast, a night march, and for dinner, a light breakfast. Once, when everything had been made ready for battle,

the generals asked whether there was anything further needed besides these preparations; he said nothing, except that the beards of the Macedonians should be shaved. When Parmenio expressed surprise, he said, "Do you not know that in battle there is no better handhold than a beard?" When Darius offered him ten thousand talents and to divide Asia between them equally, and Parmenio said, "I would accept, if I were Alexander," Alexander replied, "And so would I, by Zeus,

if I were Parmenio." He answered Darius that the earth could not endure two suns, nor Asia two kings. When he was about to risk everything at Arbela, against a million men drawn up against him, his friends came to him accusing the soldiers of talking among themselves in their tents and agreeing among themselves to bring none of the spoils to the royal treasury but to keep the gain for themselves.

He smiled and said, "You bring good news — for I hear the talk of men preparing to win, not to flee." And many of the soldiers, coming up to him, said, "O king, take courage, and do not fear the multitude of the enemy, for they will not withstand even our stench." As the army was being drawn up in battle order, seeing one of the soldiers fitting the throwing-strap to his javelin, he expelled him from the phalanx as useless, for the man

"is only now getting ready, when the time has come to use his weapons." When he was reading a letter from his mother containing secret accusations against Antipater, with Hephaestion, as usual, reading along beside him, he did not stop him; but when he had finished reading it, he took off his own ring and pressed the seal to Hephaestion's lips. When the prophet at the temple of Ammon addressed him as son of Zeus, he said it was no

wonder, "for Zeus is by nature the father of all, but he makes the best of them his own." When he was struck by an arrow in the leg, and many of those who habitually called him a god ran up to him, he said, with a smile spreading over his face, "This, as you see, is blood, and not the ichor that flows in the veins of the blessed gods." When some praised Antipater's frugality, for living simply and austerely,

Alexander said, "On the outside Antipater wears a plain white border, but within he is purple through and through." Once in winter and cold weather, when one of his friends was entertaining him and brought in a small brazier with a meager fire, Alexander told him to bring in either more wood or frankincense instead. When Antipatrides brought a beautiful lyre-girl to dinner, Alexander, struck by her looks, asked Antipatrides whether

he happened to be in love with the woman; and when the man admitted it, Alexander said, "You wretch, will you not take the woman away from the banquet at once?" Again, when Cassander tried to force a kiss from Pytho, the beloved of Euius the flute-player, Alexander, seeing Euius distressed, leapt up in anger against Cassander, crying out, "Is it not even permitted, thanks to you, for a man to be in love?" When he was sending the sick and disabled Macedonians back to the sea,

one man who was not sick had himself enrolled among the sick. When he was brought before Alexander and questioned, he admitted that he had given a false excuse because he was in love with Telesippa, who was leaving for the coast. Alexander asked, "To whom should one apply about Telesippa?" and on learning that she was a free woman, said, "Well then, Antigenes, let us persuade Telesippa to stay with us — for to force her

— for since she is free, it is not for us to force her.

When some Greek mercenaries in the enemy's service fell into his hands, he ordered the Athenians kept in chains, on the ground that they took pay for soldiering while drawing public support from home, and likewise the Thessalians, because they neglected to farm the best land in Greece; but he released the Thebans, saying, "These alone, because of us, have neither city nor country left."

When an Indian reputed to be the best of archers, said to be able to shoot an arrow through a ring, was taken prisoner, Alexander ordered him to give a demonstration; when the man refused, Alexander grew angry and ordered him put to death. But as the man was being led away he told his escort that he had not practiced for many days and was afraid of missing. When Alexander heard this he was astonished, and released him with gifts, because the man had preferred to die rather than appear unworthy of his own reputation.

When Taxiles, one of the kings of India, met him and urged him neither to fight nor to make war, but — if Alexander were the weaker — to accept good treatment, and if the stronger, to do good in turn, Alexander answered that this very question, which of them should prevail by doing good, was what must be fought over. And hearing about the famous Rock of Aornos in India, that the place was hard to take but its holder was a coward, he said, "Now the place is easy to take." When another man who held a rock thought impregnable surrendered himself along with the rock to Alexander, Alexander ordered him to command his own forces and added territory besides, saying, "This man seems to me to have good sense, for he trusted himself to a good man rather than to a strong position."

After the capture of the rock, when his friends said that he had surpassed Heracles in his exploits, he replied, "But I do not consider my own achievements, together with my command, worth a single word of Heracles'." When he noticed that some of his friends were not playing but gambling in earnest at dice, he fined them. Among his foremost and best friends he seemed to honor Craterus most of all, but to love Hephaestion; "for Craterus," he said, "loves the king, but Hephaestion loves Alexander."

When he sent fifty talents to Xenocrates the philosopher and Xenocrates would not accept them, saying he had no need of them, Alexander asked, "Does Xenocrates then have no friend either? For my part," he said, "even the wealth of Darius has barely sufficed for my friends." When Porus, after the battle, was asked by Alexander, "How am I to treat you?" he said, "Like a king," and on being asked further, "Nothing else?" he replied, "Everything is contained in 'like a king.'" Alexander, admiring both his good sense and his manly courage, added to him more territory than he had held before. On learning that someone was slandering him, he said, "It is a king's lot to be spoken ill of for doing good." As he lay dying, looking upon his companions, he said, "I see that my funeral will be a great one." When he had died, Demades the orator said that the Macedonian camp, through lack of a leader, looked like the blinded Cyclops.

Ptolemy, son of Lagus, for the most part dined and slept at his friends' houses; and whenever he himself gave a dinner, he would send for their cups and coverlets and tables, since he himself possessed nothing beyond what was necessary, but said that it was more kingly to make others rich than to be rich oneself.

Antigonus collected money strenuously; and when someone said, "But Alexander was not like this," he replied, "Naturally — he was reaping Asia, but I am gleaning after him." Seeing some of his soldiers playing ball in their breastplates and helmets, he was pleased, and summoned their officers, wishing to praise them; but when he heard that the men were in fact drinking, he gave those officers' commands to the soldiers instead. When all marveled that, now an old man, he behaved gently and mildly in his affairs, he said, "Formerly I had need of power, but now of glory and goodwill." When his son Philip, in the presence of a good many people, asked him, "When are we going to break camp?" he said, "Are you afraid you alone will not hear the trumpet?" When the young man was eager to take lodging with a widow who had three attractive daughters, Antigonus called the officer in charge of billeting and said, "Will you not get my son out of these cramped quarters?" After a long illness, when he had recovered, he said, "It was no bad thing; the illness reminded us not to think too highly of ourselves, since we are mortal." When Hermodotus, in his poems, called him a son of the Sun, he said, "My chamber-pot bearer knows nothing of this." When someone said that all things are fine and just for kings, he said, "Yes, by Zeus, for the kings of barbarians; but for us, only fine things are fine, and only just things are just." When his brother Marsyas was on trial and asked that his case be heard privately at home, he said, "No — it shall be in the market-place, before everyone, if we are doing nothing wrong." Once, in winter, in a region short of supplies, he was forced to encamp, and some of the soldiers, not knowing he was nearby, cursed him; parting the tent-flap with his staff he said, "You will be sorry, unless you move further off before you curse us." When Aristodemus, one of his friends who was reputed to have been a cook's son, advised him to cut back his expenditures and gifts, he said, "Your words, Aristodemus, smell of the apron." When the Athenians enrolled one of his slaves as a citizen, honoring him as a free man, he said, "I would not wish a single Athenian to be flogged by me." When a young pupil of Anaximenes the rhetorician delivered before him a speech he had carefully prepared beforehand, Antigonus, wishing to learn something, questioned him; and when the young man fell silent, he said, "What do you say — or is this exactly what was written on your tablets?" Hearing another orator say that the season, bringing snow, had left the country bare of fodder, he said, "Will you not stop treating me as a crowd?" When Thrasyllus the Cynic asked him for a drachma, he said, "That is not a kingly gift." And when the man said, "Then give me a talent," he replied, "That is not a Cynic's due to receive."

When he sent his son Demetrius with many ships and forces to free the Greeks, he said that this glory would be kindled, like a beacon from a watchtower in Greece, over the whole inhabited world. When Antagoras the poet was boiling a conger-eel and shaking the pan himself, Antigonus, standing behind him, said, "Do you think, Antagoras, that Homer boiled congers when he wrote of the deeds of Agamemnon?" And Antagoras replied, "But do you, O king, think that Agamemnon, while doing those deeds, busied himself with finding out whether anyone in the camp was boiling a conger?"

Having seen in a dream Mithridates reaping a golden harvest, Antigonus resolved to kill him, and telling his son Demetrius, bound him by oath to silence; but Demetrius took Mithridates along and, walking with him beside the sea, wrote on the sand with the butt-spike of his spear, "Flee, Mithridates." Understanding, the man fled to Pontus, and there he continued to reign.

Demetrius, while besieging the Rhodians, captured in a certain suburb a panel painted by Protogenes the painter, depicting Ialysus. When the Rhodians sent envoys begging him to spare the painting, he said he would rather destroy the portraits of his own father than that picture. Having made a truce with the Rhodians, he left the siege-engine behind with them, a monument at once of his own grandeur and of their courage. When the Athenians revolted, he captured the city, already suffering badly from famine, and immediately, an assembly having been convened for him, gave them a free gift of grain; and while addressing them about this, he made a slip in grammar. When one of those seated said how the word ought to have been pronounced, correcting him, he said, "Well then, for this correction too I grant you five thousand more measures."

Antigonus the Second, when his father Demetrius had been captured, and one of his friends sent word urging him to pay no attention to anything his father might write under compulsion from Seleucus, nor to give up any of the cities, wrote instead to Seleucus himself, surrendering to him his whole realm and offering himself as a hostage, on condition that his father Demetrius be released. When he was about to fight a naval battle against Ptolemy's generals, and the helmsman said the enemy's ships were far more numerous, he said, "And how many ships do you reckon me, myself present, worth?" Once, retreating before an advancing enemy, he said he was not fleeing but pursuing an advantage that lay behind him. When a young man, son of a brave father but himself not thought a particularly good soldier, claimed he ought to receive his father's allowances, Antigonus said, "But I, young man, give pay and gifts for manly courage, not for having a courageous father." When Zeno of Citium died, the philosopher he admired most of all, he said that the theater of his own achievements had been taken away.

Lysimachus, overpowered by Dromichaetes in Thrace, and, through thirst, surrendering both himself and his army, when he had drunk after being taken prisoner, said, "O gods, for how small a pleasure have I made myself a slave instead of a king!" To Philippides the comic poet, his friend and intimate, he said, "What of mine shall I share with you?" and Philippides replied, "Whatever you wish, except your secrets."

Antipater, on hearing of Parmenio's death at Alexander's hands, said, "If Parmenio was plotting against Alexander, whom can one trust? But if not, what is to be done?" Of Demades the orator, now grown an old man, he said that, like a sacrificial victim, all that was left of him was the belly and the tongue.

Antiochus the Third wrote to the cities that if he should ever issue an order contrary to the laws, they should disregard it, as issued in ignorance. Seeing the priestess of Artemis, who appeared exceedingly beautiful, he at once broke camp and left Ephesus, fearing lest he be forced against his judgment to do something unholy.

Antiochus, son of Hierax. Antiochus, surnamed Hawk, made war on his brother Seleucus for the kingship; and when Seleucus, defeated by the Gauls, was nowhere to be found and was believed to have been cut down, Antiochus set aside his purple robe and put on a gray cloak. But shortly afterward, learning that his brother was safe, he offered thank-offerings to the gods and had the cities under his rule wear garlands.

Eumenes, plotted against by Perseus, was thought to have died; and when the report reached Pergamum, his brother Attalus put on the diadem, married his wife, and became king. But when he learned that his brother was approaching, alive, he went to meet him just as he was accustomed, with his bodyguards, spear in hand. Eumenes greeted him warmly and, whispering in his ear, said, "Do not be in such a hurry to marry, before you see me dead" — and for the rest of his life said or did nothing else suspicious toward him, but even at his death left him his wife and kingdom. In return, Attalus, though he had many children of his own, raised none of them, but handed over the kingdom, while still living, to Eumenes' son once he had come of age.

Pyrrhus' sons, while still boys, asked him to whom he would leave the kingdom; and Pyrrhus said, "To whichever of you keeps the sharper sword." Asked whether Python or Caphisias was the better flute-player, he said, "Polyperchon is the better general." When, having engaged the Romans, he won two victories but lost many of his friends and officers, he said, "If we win one more battle against the Romans, we are undone." When he sailed away from Sicily after his failure there, turning back to his friends he said, "What a wrestling-ground we are leaving for the Romans and the Carthaginians!" When his soldiers addressed him as "Eagle," he said, "Of course — how could I not be, when I am borne aloft by your weapons as by swift wings?" Hearing that some young men, while drinking, had said much that was abusive about him, he ordered them all brought before him the next day. When they were brought, he asked the first whether they had said these things about him, and the young man replied, "We did say that, O king — and we would have said more, if we had had more wine."

Antiochus, who campaigned a second time against the Parthians, having strayed from his friends and attendants during a hunt and pursuit, entered unrecognized a farmstead of poor people; and over dinner, when the talk turned to the king, he heard it said that in other respects he was a good man, but, entrusting too much to worthless friends, he overlooked most things and often neglected what was necessary because he was too fond of hunting. At the time he said nothing; but at daybreak, when his guardsmen arrived at the farmstead and he was revealed, and the purple robe and diadem were brought to him, he said, "But it is only from this day that I have adopted you — yesterday, for the first time, I heard true words about myself." When the Jews, while he was besieging Jerusalem, asked for a seven-day truce for their greatest festival, he not only granted it, but also had bulls with gilded horns and a quantity of incense and spices paraded up to the very gates, and, handing the sacrifice over to their priests, himself returned to his camp. The Jews, in astonishment, surrendered themselves to him immediately after the festival.

Themistocles, while still a young man, used to roll about in drinking bouts and with women; but once Miltiades, as general, defeated the barbarians at Marathon, Themistocles was no longer to be found behaving disorderly. To those who marveled at the change, he said that Miltiades' trophy would not let him sleep or be idle.

Asked whether he would rather have been Achilles or Homer, he said, "Would you yourself rather be the man who wins at Olympia, or the one who proclaims the winners?" When Xerxes was coming down upon Greece with his great armada, Themistocles, fearing that Epicydes the demagogue, a greedy and cowardly man, might become general and ruin the city, persuaded him with money to withdraw from the generalship. When Adeimantus, who did not dare to fight at sea, said to Themistocles, as he was urging and exhorting the Greeks, "Themistocles, at the games they whip those who start before the signal," Themistocles replied, "Yes, Adeimantus — but they do not crown those left behind." When Eurybiades raised his staff as if to strike him, Themistocles said, "Strike, if you will — but hear me out." Failing to persuade Eurybiades to fight in the straits, he secretly sent word to the barbarian king urging him not to fear the Greeks' flight; and when the king, persuaded, was defeated in the sea-battle fought where it favored the Greeks, Themistocles again sent to him, urging him to flee to the Hellespont with all speed, as the Greeks were planning to break the bridge — so that in saving the Greeks he might also seem to be saving him. When a man of Seriphus told him that he owed his fame not to himself but to his city, Themistocles said, "True — but I would not have become famous had I been a Seriphian, nor would you, had you been an Athenian." When Antiphates the handsome, who had once spurned and scorned Themistocles' love, later, once Themistocles had won great reputation and power, began to approach him and flatter him, Themistocles said, "Young man, we have both come to our senses late, but we have come to them." To Simonides, who was asking a favor for someone

...unjust verdict from Simonides, he said that Simonides would no more become a good poet by singing out of tune than he himself would become a good magistrate by judging contrary to law. He used to say that his son, who ordered his mother about, had more power than anyone in Greece: for the Athenians ruled the Greeks, he ruled the Athenians, the boy's mother ruled him, and the boy ruled his mother. Of the suitors for his daughter, preferring the decent man to the wealthy one, he said he was looking for a man in need of money rather than money in need of a man. When selling a piece of land, he ordered the crier to announce that it also had a good neighbor. When the Athenians were abusing him, he said, "Why do you tire of being well served so often by the same man?" He compared himself to plane trees, under which people run for shelter when caught in a storm, but which, once fair weather returns, they strip and lop as they pass by. Mocking the Eretrians, he said that, like cuttlefish, they had a blade but no heart.

When he was first driven out of Athens, and then out of Greece, he went up to the Persian king, and, being ordered to speak, said that speech resembled embroidered tapestries: like them, when unrolled it displayed its patterns, but when folded up it hid and spoiled them. He also asked for time, so that, having learned the Persian language, he might address the king himself and not through an interpreter. Having been honored with many gifts and quickly become rich, he said to his children, "Children, we would have been ruined, if we had not been ruined."

Myronides, leading a campaign against the Boeotians, ordered the Athenians to march out; when the hour arrived and the captains said not everyone was yet present, he said, "Those who are going to fight are present" — and using these eager men, he defeated the enemy.

Aristides the Just always conducted his political affairs on his own and avoided political clubs, on the ground that the power derived from friends encourages wrongdoing. When the Athenians were setting about an ostracism, an illiterate and uncouth man came up to him holding a potsherd and asked him to write on it the name of Aristides. "Do you actually know Aristides?" he asked. When the man said he did not know him, but was simply annoyed at his being called "the Just," Aristides said nothing, wrote his own name on the shard, and gave it back. Though an enemy of Themistocles, when sent out as an envoy together with him he said, "Themistocles, shall we leave our enmity behind at the border? For if it seems good, we can take it up again when we return." After assessing the tribute for the Greeks, he returned poorer by exactly the amount he had spent on the mission. When Aeschylus, writing of Amphiaraus, composed the lines, "For he wishes not to seem but to be the best, reaping the deep furrow of his mind, from which good counsels spring," at these words everyone turned to look at Aristides.

Pericles, whenever he was about to take command, would say to himself as he put on his cloak, "Watch yourself, Pericles — you are about to rule free men, both Greeks and Athenians." He urged the Athenians to remove Aegina, like a piece of rheum, from the eye of the Piraeus. When a friend asked him for false testimony that was also to be given under oath, he said he was a friend only as far as the altar. When he was about to die, he counted himself blessed that no Athenian had ever put on mourning clothes because of him.

Alcibiades, while still a boy, was caught in a hold in the wrestling school; unable to escape, he bit the hand of the one throwing him. When the other said, "You bite like a woman," he replied, "No indeed — like a lion." Owning a very beautiful dog he had bought for seven thousand drachmas, he cut off its tail, saying, "so that the Athenians will talk about this and pry into nothing else about me." Going into a schoolroom, he asked for a copy of a book of the Iliad; when the teacher said he had nothing of Homer's, Alcibiades gave him a punch and walked on. Coming to Pericles' door and learning that he had no time free because he was working out how to render his accounts to the Athenians, he said, "Would it not be better to work out how not to render them at all?" When summoned by the Athenians from Sicily to stand trial on a capital charge, he went into hiding, saying it was foolish, when facing a court case, to seek acquittal when one could simply flee instead. When someone said, "Do you not trust your homeland to judge your case?" he replied, "No — not even my mother, for fear she might cast the black pebble by mistake instead of the white one." On hearing that a death sentence had been passed against him and those with him, he said, "Let us then show them that we are alive" — and, turning to the Spartans, he stirred up the Decelean War against the Athenians.

Lamachus was reprimanding one of his captains for an error; when the man said he would not do it again, Lamachus said, "In war there is no doing it twice."

Iphicrates, thought to be the son of a shoemaker, was despised for it; he first won renown when, though wounded, he seized an enemy soldier alive together with his weapons and carried him off to his own trireme. Once, encamped in a friendly and allied country, he was carefully building a palisade and digging a trench; when someone said, "What is there for us to fear?" he replied that the worst thing a general could say was "I did not expect it." When drawing up his forces against the barbarians, he said he was afraid that they did not know Iphicrates, the name with which he terrified his other enemies. Standing trial on a capital charge, he said to his accuser, "What are you doing, man — with war upon us, persuading the city to deliberate about me instead of with me?" To Harmodius, descendant of the ancient Harmodius, who taunted him for his low birth, he said, "My family begins with me; yours ends with you." When an orator in the assembly asked him, "Just what are you, that you think so highly of yourself — a cavalryman, a hoplite, an archer, or a peltast?" he replied, "None of these — but the man who knows how to command all of them."

Timotheus was considered a lucky general, and some who envied him used to paint pictures of cities walking into a fishing-net of their own accord while he slept. Timotheus would say, "If I capture such great cities while asleep, what do you suppose I would do awake?" When one of the daring generals was displaying a wound to the Athenians, Timotheus said, "As for me, I was ashamed that, while I was your general at Samos, a catapult bolt fell anywhere near me." When the orators were promoting Chares and claiming that this was the sort of man the Athenian general should be, Timotheus said, "Not the general — rather the man who carries the general's bedding."

Chabrias used to say that the best generals were those who knew the enemy's affairs best. When standing trial for treason together with Iphicrates, Iphicrates rebuked him for going to the gymnasium and eating lunch at his usual hour even while in such danger. Chabrias said, "Well then, if the Athenians decide against us for any other reason, they will put you to death squalid and unfed, and me well-lunched and freshly oiled." He used to say that an army of deer led by a lion was more fearsome than an army of lions led by a deer.

When Hegesippus, nicknamed Crobylus, was urging the Athenians on against Philip, someone in the assembly shouted out, "You're proposing war!" "Yes, by Zeus," he said, "and black mourning garments, public funerals, and funeral orations too, if we are to live as free men and not do what the Macedonians order." Pytheas, while still a young man, came forward to speak against the decrees being drawn up in honor of Alexander. When someone said, "You dare, young as you are, to speak on matters of such magnitude?" he replied, "Well, Alexander, whom you are voting to be a god, is younger than I am."

Phocion the Athenian was seen by no one either laughing or weeping. Once in the assembly, when someone said, "You look as though you're thinking hard, Phocion," he replied, "You guess rightly — I am thinking whether I can cut anything out of what I am about to say to the Athenians." When an oracle was given to the Athenians that there was one man in the city who opposed the opinions of everyone else, and the Athenians called out demanding to know who he was, Phocion said that he himself was that man; for he alone was pleased by none of what the majority did and said. Once, when he was delivering an opinion to the assembly and finding favor, and saw everyone alike approving his speech, he turned to his friends and said, "Surely I haven't said something bad without realizing it?" When the Athenians were asking for contributions toward some sacrifice and everyone else was contributing, and he was called on repeatedly, he said, "I would be ashamed to give to you while not repaying this man" — pointing at the same time to his creditor.

When Demosthenes the orator said, "The Athenians will kill you, if they go mad," he replied, "Yes — me, if they go mad; you, if they come to their senses." When Aristogeiton the informer, condemned and about to die in prison, sent asking Phocion to come to him, and his friends tried to stop him from going to see such a wicked man, Phocion said, "And where would one more gladly talk with Aristogeiton?" When the Athenians were angry at the Byzantines for not admitting into their city Chares, who had been sent with a force to help them against Philip, Phocion said, "We should be angry not at the allies who distrust us, but at the generals who are distrusted" — and he himself was chosen general; and, being trusted by the Byzantines, he made Philip withdraw having accomplished nothing.

When King Alexander sent him a gift of a hundred talents, he asked the men bringing it why, when there were so many Athenians, Alexander was giving this to him alone; and when they said it was because Alexander considered him alone to be a true gentleman, he said, "Then let him allow me both to seem and to be such a man." When Alexander was demanding triremes and the people called on Phocion by name to come forward and give his advice, he stood up and said, "My advice to you, then, is either to be masters by force of arms, or to be friends of those who are masters." When an unverified report of Alexander's death arrived, and the orators leapt straight up onto the platform urging that there be no delay but that they go to war at once, Phocion insisted on waiting and finding out for certain. "For if he is dead today," he said, "he will still be dead tomorrow and the day after."

When Leosthenes plunged the city into war, its spirits raised by bright hopes tied to the name of freedom and of leadership, Phocion compared his speeches to cypress trees: "For though they are handsome and tall," he said, "they bear no fruit." When the first engagements succeeded and the city was offering sacrifices of good news, he was asked whether he would have wished these things to have been done by him; he said, "I would wish these deeds to have been done, but not that policy to have been decided on." When the Macedonians attacked Attica and were ravaging the coast, he led out the men of military age; and when many ran up to him urging him to seize that hill or station his forces there, he said, "Heracles, how many generals I see, and how few soldiers!" Nevertheless, he engaged them, prevailed, and killed Nicion, the Macedonian commander.

A little later, the Athenians, defeated in the war, accepted a garrison from Antipater; and when Menyllus, the commander of the garrison, offered Phocion money, he angrily replied that Menyllus was no better than Alexander, and that the pretext on which he would now be taking it was worse — since he had refused it then. Antipater used to say that of his two friends at Athens, he had never persuaded Phocion to accept anything, nor had he ever managed to satisfy Demades by giving. When Antipater asked him to do something unjust, he said, "You cannot, Antipater, have Phocion both as a friend and as a flatterer."

After Antipater's death, when democracy was restored to the Athenians, a sentence of death was passed in the assembly against Phocion and his friends. The others were led off weeping; but as Phocion walked in silence, one of his enemies came up and spat in his face. Looking toward the magistrates, he said, "Will no one stop this man's disgraceful behavior?" When one of those about to die with him was lamenting and complaining, he said, "Are you not content, Thoudippus, to die together with Phocion?" As the cup was already being brought to him, he was asked whether he had any word for his son. "I charge you," he said, "and urge you to bear the Athenians no grudge."

Peisistratus, tyrant of the Athenians, when some of his friends broke away from him and seized Phyle, went to them himself, carrying his own bedroll. When they asked what he wanted, he said, "I have come packed and ready either to persuade you to come away with me, or, if I fail to persuade you, to stay here with you — that is why I've come with my baggage." When his mother was maligned to him for being in love with a certain young man and secretly meeting with him, though the youth was fearful and mostly kept his distance, Peisistratus invited the young man to dinner and, after the meal, asked him how it had gone. When he said, "Pleasantly," Peisistratus said, "You shall have the same, every day, if you please my mother." When Thrasybulus, in love with his daughter, met her and kissed her, his wife urged him to be angry at Thrasybulus; but he said, "If we are to hate those who love us, what shall we do to those who hate us?" — and he gave the girl to Thrasybulus in marriage. When some revelers ran into his wife and did and said many outrageous things to her, and the next day came to Peisistratus begging and weeping, he said, "For your part, try to behave yourselves from now on — as for my wife, she did not so much as leave the house at all yesterday." When he was about to marry another wife, and his children asked anxiously whether he had some fault to find with them, he said, "Not at all — quite the opposite, I am praising you, and wish to have other children just like you."

Demetrius of Phalerum advised King Ptolemy to acquire and read books on kingship and rule: "for the things that friends do not dare to advise kings, these are written in books."

Lycurgus the Spartan accustomed the citizens to wear their hair long, saying that for the handsome it made them more comely, and for the ugly it made them more terrifying. To the man who urged him to establish democracy in the city, he said, "You first establish democracy in your own household." He ordered that houses be built using only the saw and the axe, since men would be ashamed to bring costly cups, bedding, and tables into houses built so plainly. He forbade contests in boxing and the pancration, so that the citizens would not grow accustomed to giving up even in play. He forbade campaigning against the same enemies too often, so as not to make them more warlike. Indeed, later, when Agesilaus was wounded, Antalcidas remarked that he was getting fine tuition fees from the Thebans, whom he had trained and taught to fight though they were unwilling.

King Charillus, asked why Lycurgus had established so few laws, replied that men who used few words had no need of many laws. When one of the helots behaved rather insolently toward him, he said, "By the Twin Gods, I would have killed you, if I were not angry." To one who asked why they wore their hair long, he said that of all ornaments, this one cost the least.

King Teleclus, to his brother, who was complaining that the citizens treated him rather ungraciously,

“No,” he said, “for you do not know how to suffer wrong.” When Theopompus, in a certain city, was shown its wall by a man who asked him whether he thought it fine and lofty, he said, “Not even if it belonged to women.” Archidamus, when in the Peloponnesian War the allies demanded that their contributions be fixed, said, “War does not feed on a fixed ration.” Brasidas, having caught a mouse among some dried figs and been bitten by it, let it go, and then said to those present, “Nothing is so small that it cannot save itself if it dares to defend itself against its attackers.” In battle, having been struck through his shield by a spear, he pulled the spear out of the wound and with that very weapon killed the enemy soldier; and when asked how he had been wounded, he said, “My shield betrayed me.” Since it happened that he fell while freeing the Greeks of Thrace,

and the envoys sent to Lacedaemon called upon his mother, she first asked whether Brasidas had died nobly; and when the Thracians praised him and said that there would never be another like him, she said, “You are mistaken, strangers — Brasidas was indeed a good man, but Lacedaemon has many better than he.” King Agis said that the Lacedaemonians do not ask how many the enemy are, but where they are. And when he was being prevented at Mantinea from fighting the enemy, who were more numerous, he said, “Whoever wishes to rule over many must fight against many.” When the Eleans were being praised for conducting the Olympic games so well, he said, “What is so wonderful in their doing, once every four years, on a single day, what is just?” And when they persisted in their praise, he said,

“What is so wonderful if they handle a fine matter finely — namely, justice?” To a wicked man who kept asking who was the best of the Spartans, he said, “The one most unlike you.” When another asked how many the Lacedaemonians were, he said, “Enough to keep off the wicked.” And when another asked the same thing, he said, “They will seem many to you if you see them fighting.” Lysander, when Dionysius the tyrant sent expensive garments for his daughters, would not accept them, saying he feared they would appear the more shameful on their account. To those who reproached him for accomplishing most things by deceit, as unworthy of Heracles, he used to say that where the lion’s skin does not reach, the fox’s skin must be sewn on. When the Argives seemed to speak more justly than the Lacedaemonians about the disputed territory,

he drew his sword and said, “Whoever holds this argues best about the boundaries of land.” And when he saw the Lacedaemonians reluctant to press the attack on the walls of the Corinthians, on seeing a hare leap out of the ditch he said, “Are these the sort of enemies you fear, whose hares sleep undisturbed within their walls out of sheer idleness?” And when a man of Megara spoke to him with frankness in a public gathering, he said, “Your words need a city behind them.” Agesilaus used to say that those who dwell in Asia were bad as free men but good as slaves. Since they were accustomed to call the King of the Persians “Great,” he said, “How is he greater than I, unless he is also more just and more temperate?” When asked, concerning courage and justice, which was the better, he said, “We have no need of courage at all, if all of us are just.” When one night, as he was about to

withdraw in haste from enemy territory, he saw his beloved being left behind through weakness, weeping, he said, “It is hard to feel both pity and sound judgment at once.” When Menecrates the physician, who was called Zeus, wrote him a letter that began, “Menecrates Zeus to King Agesilaus, greetings,” he wrote back, “King Agesilaus to Menecrates, good health.” When the Lacedaemonians defeated the Athenians and their allies at Corinth, and he learned the number of the

enemy dead, he said, “Alas for Greece, which has destroyed by her own hand so many men as would have sufficed to conquer all the barbarians!” Having received at Olympia from Zeus the oracle he wished, and then, when the ephors bade him ask the Pythian god about the same matters, he went to Delphi and asked the god whether he too approved what his father approved. When he was begging off some favor for one of his

friends from Idrieus the Carian, he wrote to him: “If Nicias is not guilty, release him; if he is guilty, release him for my sake; in any case, release him.” When someone who imitated the voice of the nightingale invited him to listen to it, he said, “I have often heard the bird itself.” After the battle at Leuctra, since the law required that all who had fled be disenfranchised, the ephors, seeing the city bereft

of men, wished to suspend the disenfranchisement, and they appointed Agesilaus lawgiver; and he, coming forward into their midst, ordered that the laws should take effect from the next day onward. When, having been sent as an ally to the king of the Egyptians, he was being besieged along with him, the enemy being many times more numerous and digging a trench around the camp, and the king urged him to sally out and fight it out, he said he would not prevent the enemy

from making themselves equal to his own numbers if they wished. But when only a small gap remained for the ditch to close, he drew up his forces at that point where it was still open, and fighting against equal numbers, equal to equal, he won. As he was dying, he ordered his friends to make no image of him, molded or modeled, saying, “If I have done any noble deed, that is my monument; but if I have done none, not even all the statues in the world will help.” Archidamus, son

of Agesilaus, on seeing a catapult bolt, then brought for the first time from Sicily, cried out, “O Heracles, the valor of man is done for!” And the younger Agis, when Demades said that Laconian swords were so short that jugglers could swallow them, said, “And yet it is the Lacedaemonians above all who reach the enemy with their swords.” When the ephors ordered him to hand over soldiers to the traitor, he said he did not trust foreigners to a man who

had betrayed his own people. Cleomenes, to a man who promised to give him fighting cocks that would die in battle, said, “Not those — rather give me the ones that kill in battle.” Paedaretus, not having been chosen among the Three Hundred, which was the foremost honor in the city in rank, went away cheerful and smiling, saying he was glad that the city had three hundred citizens better than himself.

Damonidas, having been assigned to the last place in the chorus by the man arranging it, said, “Well done — you have discovered how this place too may become honored.” Nicostratus, the general of the Argives, when urged by Archidamus to betray a certain place for a great sum of money and marriage to a Laconian woman of his choosing, apart from the royal family, replied that Archidamus was no descendant of Heracles; for

Heracles went about punishing the wicked, but Archidamus made the good wicked. Eudamidas, seeing in the Academy Xenocrates, already an old man, philosophizing with his pupils, and learning that he was in search of virtue, said, “Then when will he make use of it?” Again, on hearing a philosopher argue that only the wise man is a good general, he said, “The argument is admirable, but the speaker

has not sounded the trumpet.” Antiochus, while ephor, on hearing that Philip had given the Messenians their land, asked whether he had also given them the power to hold it by fighting for it. Antalcidas, to the Athenian who called the Lacedaemonians ignorant, said, “At any rate, we alone have learned no evil from you.” And when another Athenian said to him, “But we have often driven you back

from the Cephisus,” he said, “But we have never driven you back from the Eurotas.” When a sophist was about to read a eulogy of Heracles, he said, “Who, then, finds fault with him?” While Epaminondas the Theban was general, no panic ever fell upon the camp. He used to say that death in war was the noblest death, and he declared that the bodies of hoplites ought to be trained not only athletically but also for military service; for this reason

he made war on the corpulent, and he drove one such man out of the army, saying that three or four shields could scarcely cover his belly, on account of which he had not seen his own genitals. So frugal was he in his way of living that, having been invited to dinner by a neighbor, on finding a display of cakes and delicacies and perfumes he left at once, saying, “I thought you were making a sacrifice,

not committing an outrage.” When the cook was rendering an account to his fellow officials of the expense of several days, he was vexed only at the quantity of oil; and when his colleagues wondered at this, he said it was not the expense that troubled him, but whether so much oil had been taken into his body. When the city was celebrating a festival and everyone was engaged in drinking and revelry, he met one of his acquaintances, unkempt

and walking with a troubled look; and when the man wondered and asked why he alone went about in such a state, he said, “So that it may be possible for all of you to get drunk and take your ease.” When a worthless man had committed some minor offense, though Pelopidas pleaded for him he would not release him, but when the man’s mistress begged for him he released him, saying that such favors were fit to be granted to courtesans, but not to generals. And when, as the Lacedaemonians were making war, oracles were being brought to the

Thebans, some foretelling defeat and others victory, he ordered those who brought them to place the ones on the right side of the platform and the others on the left. When all had been placed, he stood up and said, “If you are willing to obey your commanders and go to meet the enemy, these are the oracles for you” — pointing to the better ones — “but if you lose heart before the danger, then those are” — looking toward the worse ones.

Again, as he was advancing upon the enemy, there was a clap of thunder, and when those around him asked what he thought the god meant by it, he said the enemy had been thunderstruck, “because, with such ground nearby, they are encamping in such a place as this.” He said that of all the fine and good things that had happened to him, the most pleasant was that his father and mother were still living when he conquered the Lacedaemonians at Leuctra. Though he was accustomed to appear at other times

anointed in body and cheerful in countenance, on the day after that battle he came forward unkempt and downcast; and when his friends asked whether some misfortune had befallen him, he said, “Nothing — but yesterday I perceived that I had felt a greater pride than is proper, and so today I am chastening the excess of my joy.” Knowing that the Spartans concealed such misfortunes, and

wishing to expose the magnitude of their disaster, he did not grant them all together the recovery of their dead, but to each city separately, so that the Lacedaemonian dead, being more than a thousand, were seen to be so many. When Jason, the monarch of the Thessalians, came to Thebes as an ally, and sent Epaminondas, who was in dire poverty, two thousand pieces of gold, he did not accept the gold, but on seeing Jason he said, “You are exercising

an unjust power.” He himself, having borrowed fifty drachmas from one of the citizens as travel money for the campaign, invaded the Peloponnese. Again, when the King of the Persians sent him thirty thousand darics, he bitterly rebuked Diomedon for having sailed so long a voyage to corrupt Epaminondas; and he bade him tell the king that if he had in mind what was advantageous to the Thebans, he would have Epaminondas as a friend for nothing, but if not,

as an enemy. When the Argives became allies of the Thebans, and Athenian envoys, arriving in Arcadia, accused both peoples, and Callistratus the orator reproached the two cities with Orestes and Oedipus, Epaminondas rose up and said, “We admit that among us a father-slayer was born, and among the Argives a mother-slayer; but those who did these deeds we cast out, while the Athenians received them.” And to

the Spartans, who had leveled many grave charges against the Thebans, he said, “It was these men, at any rate, who cured you of speaking so briefly.” When Alexander, tyrant of Pherae, an enemy of the Thebans, was made a friend and ally by the Athenians, having promised to supply them meat by the pound at half an obol, Epaminondas said, “We for our part will supply the Athenians with firewood for free for that

meat, for we shall cut down their land, if they meddle in affairs not their own.” Wishing always to keep the Boeotians, who grew slack through idleness, under arms, whenever he was chosen Boeotarch he would say by way of exhortation, “Consider well, men; for if I am your general, you will have to go on campaign.” And he called their country, being flat and open, “the dancing-floor of war,” since they could not hold it unless they kept their hand through the shield-strap. When Chabrias, near

Corinth, cut down a few Thebans who loved to fight beneath the walls and set up a trophy, Epaminondas mocked him, saying, “There ought to stand there not a trophy but a shrine of Hecate” — for it was customary to set up shrines of Hecate at the crossroads before the gates. And when someone reported that the Athenians had sent to the Peloponnese an army equipped with new arms, he said, “Why, then, does Antigenides groan because Telles

has new pipes?” — Telles being a very poor flute-player, and Antigenides a very fine one. And on perceiving that his shield-bearer had taken a great sum of money from a man who had become a prisoner of war, he said, “Give me back my shield, and buy yourself a tavern to live out your life in; for you will no longer wish to run the same risks now that you have become one of the rich and fortunate.” When asked whether he considered himself a better general than

Chabrias or Iphicrates, he said, “That is hard to judge while we are still alive.” When, on returning from Laconia, he was tried for his life along with his fellow generals, for having held the office of Boeotarch four months beyond what the law allowed, he bade his colleagues lay the blame on him, as having been forced into it, while he himself said he had no better words than his deeds; but if he must say anything at all to

the judges, he asked, if they condemned him to death, that they inscribe on the pillar recording his sentence, so that the Greeks might know that Epaminondas had compelled the Thebans, against their will, to burn Laconia, which had gone unravaged for five hundred years; to resettle Messene after two hundred and thirty years; to organize and bring together the Arcadians into one body; and to restore to the Greeks their independence — for these were the deeds accomplished on

that campaign. So the judges went out amid much laughter, without even taking up the ballots against him. In the last battle, having been wounded and carried to his tent, he called for Daiphantus, and then, after him, for Iolaidas; and on learning that these men were dead, he ordered that terms be made with the enemy, since they had no general left. And his deed bore out his word, as one who knew

the citizens best of all. Pelopidas, the fellow general of Epaminondas, when his friends said he was neglecting a necessary matter — the gathering of money — said, “Necessary indeed is money, by Zeus, for this man,” pointing to Nicodemus, a lame and crippled man. And when his wife, as he was setting out for battle, begged him to save himself, he said that this was advice to give to others, but that a ruler and general must save his fellow citizens. And when one of the

When one of the soldiers said, "We have fallen into the enemy's hands," he replied, "How is that different from their falling into ours?" When he had been treacherously seized by Alexander, tyrant of Pherae, and was speaking harshly to him despite being in chains, and Alexander said, "Are you in a hurry to die?" he answered, "Certainly, so that the Thebans will be roused all the more, and you will pay the penalty sooner." When Thebe, the tyrant's wife, came to Pelopidas and said she was amazed that he was so cheerful even in chains, he said he was amazed at her even more, that she endured Alexander without being in chains. When Epaminondas ransomed him, he said he was grateful to Alexander, for he had now tested himself most fully, and found himself of good courage not only toward war but also toward death.

Manius Curius, when some accused him of distributing only a small portion of the captured land to each man and making the greater part public property, prayed that no Roman would ever consider the land that feeds him too little. When the Samnites came to him after their defeat and offered gold, he happened to be boiling turnips in earthen pots, and he answered the Samnites that he had no need of gold while dining on such a meal; it was better for him to rule those who possessed gold than to possess it himself. Gaius Fabricius, on learning of the Roman defeat under Laevinus, said, "It was Pyrrhus, not the Epirotes, who defeated the Romans."

When he went to Pyrrhus to negotiate the release of prisoners, and Pyrrhus offered him much gold, he refused to take it. The next day Pyrrhus had his largest elephant positioned behind Fabricius, who did not know it was there, and had it let out a cry to make it suddenly appear; and when this happened, Fabricius turned around, smiled, and said, "Neither your gold yesterday nor your beast today has frightened me." When Pyrrhus urged him to stay with him and hold the second command after himself, he said, "That would not even be to your advantage: for if the Epirotes come to know us both, they will prefer to be ruled by me rather than by you."

While Fabricius was consul, Pyrrhus's physician sent him a letter, offering, if he ordered it, to kill Pyrrhus with poison. Fabricius sent the letter on to Pyrrhus, urging him to realize that he was a poor judge both of friends and of enemies. When Pyrrhus discovered the plot, he had the physician hanged, and returned the prisoners to Fabricius without ransom; but Fabricius did not accept them as a gift, and instead gave back an equal number in return, so that he might not seem to be taking a reward — for he had not disclosed the plot as a favor to Pyrrhus, but so that the Romans would not seem to kill by treachery, as if unable to win openly.

Fabius Maximus, unwilling to fight Hannibal but preferring to wear down his forces over time — forces that were short of both money and provisions — kept following him through rough and mountainous country, marching alongside him at a distance. When the crowd mocked him and called him Hannibal's tutor, he paid little heed and followed his own reasoning, telling his friends that he considered a man who feared taunts and abuse more cowardly than one who fled from the enemy. When his co-commander Minucius struck down some of the enemy and there was much talk of him as a man worthy of Rome, Fabius said he feared Minucius's good fortune more than his bad fortune; and shortly afterward, when Minucius fell into an ambush and was in danger of perishing with his entire force, Fabius came to his aid, destroyed many of the enemy, and saved him.

Hannibal then said to his friends, "Did I not often tell you about that cloud coming down from the mountains, that it would one day break in a storm upon us?" After the disaster at Cannae, when Fabius was made commander of the city together with Claudius Marcellus, a man of daring who always loved to fight Hannibal, Fabius hoped that if no one engaged him, Hannibal's forces, being stretched thin, would soon give out. So Hannibal said that he feared Fabius, who did not fight, more than Marcellus, who did. When a certain Lucanian soldier was accused before him of repeatedly slipping away from camp at night out of love for a woman, though otherwise reported to be an admirable man in arms, he ordered the man's beloved to be secretly seized and brought to him.

When the man was brought before him, Fabius summoned him and said, "You have not escaped notice, wandering about at night against the law; but neither had your merit escaped notice before. Let your faults be canceled out by your good deeds, and from now on you shall remain with us — for I have a surety for you." And bringing the woman forward, he presented her to him. When Fabius, holding the Tarentines under blockade except for the acropolis, drew Hannibal far away by a ruse and captured and plundered the city, and his secretary asked what he had decided about the sacred statues, he replied, "Let us leave the Tarentines their angry gods." When Marcus Livius, who had held the acropolis, said that it was because of him that the city had been recovered, the others laughed, but Fabius said, "You speak the truth: for if you had not lost the city, I would never have retaken it."

By now an old man, when his son was consul and was conducting public business in the presence of a large crowd, Fabius rode up on horseback toward him. The young man sent a lictor and ordered him to dismount; the others present were taken aback, but Fabius himself leapt down from his horse and, running toward his son with a speed beyond his years, embraced him and said, "Well done, my son, for understanding whom you rule and what greatness of office you have taken up." Scipio the Elder, spending his leisure away from campaigns and public life in literary pursuits, used to say that when he was at leisure he accomplished more. When he had taken Carthage by storm and some soldiers, having captured a beautiful young woman, brought her to him as a gift, he said, "I would gladly have accepted her, if I were a private citizen and not a commander."

While besieging the city of Bathea, above which a temple of Aphrodite could be seen, he ordered that legal pledges be sworn there, saying that on the third day he would hear the disputants in the temple of Aphrodite; and this he did, just as he had foretold, once the city had been captured. When someone in Sicily asked him what he was relying on when he intended to cross with his fleet against Carthage, he pointed to three hundred armed men training and a high tower overlooking the sea, and said, "There is not one of these men who, if I ordered it, would not climb that tower and throw himself down headfirst." When he had crossed over and gained control of the land and burned the enemy's camps, the Carthaginians sent envoys and made a treaty, agreeing to give up their war elephants, their ships, and their money; but when Hannibal sailed back from Italy, they began to regret the agreement, emboldened by his return.

When Scipio learned of this, he said that even if they now wished it, he would no longer keep the treaty with them unless they paid an additional five thousand talents, because they had sent for Hannibal. When the Carthaginians, decisively defeated, sent envoys to him concerning a truce and peace, he ordered those who had come to leave at once, saying he would not hear them until they brought Lucius Terentius to him; Terentius was a Roman, a decent man, who had been taken prisoner by the Carthaginians. When they came bringing the man, Scipio seated him beside himself on the tribunal in the council, and in this way he dealt with the Carthaginians and brought the war to an end. Terentius followed him in his triumph wearing the cap of a freedman; and when Scipio died, Terentius provided honeyed wine to those who came to the funeral, and showed every mark of devotion in the burial arrangements. But these things belong to a later time.

When King Antiochus, after the Romans had crossed over into Asia against him, sent envoys to Scipio about a settlement, Scipio said, "You should have done this earlier, not now, when you have already accepted both the bridle and the rider." When the Senate voted that he should receive money from the treasury, and the treasurers were unwilling to open it that day, he said he would open it himself: for it was on his account that the treasury was closed, since he had filled it with so much money. When Petillius and Quintus brought many accusations against him before the people, he said that on that very day he had defeated the Carthaginians and Hannibal, and that he himself would go up, crowned, to the Capitol to offer sacrifice, and told anyone who wished to cast a vote against him to do so; and having said this, he began to go up, and the people followed him, leaving his accusers behind still speaking.

Titus Quinctius was so distinguished from the very outset that he was elected consul before holding the offices of tribune, praetor, or aedile. Sent as general against Philip, he was persuaded to meet him for a conference; and when Philip demanded that he take hostages, on the ground that Philip himself was with many Romans while he was alone among Macedonians, Quinctius replied, "It was you yourself who made yourself alone, by killing your friends and kinsmen." Having defeated Philip in battle, he proclaimed at the Isthmian Games that he set the Greeks free and released them to their own laws. As for those Romans who had been taken captive and enslaved among the Greeks in the time of Hannibal, the Greeks ransomed each of them for five hundred drachmas and gave them to him as a gift, and they too followed him in his triumph at Rome, wearing caps upon their heads,

just as is the custom for those who have been freed. He ordered the Achaeans, who were planning a campaign against the island of Zacynthus, to be on their guard, lest, like tortoises stretching their heads out beyond the Peloponnese, they put themselves in danger. When King Antiochus came into Greece with a great force, and everyone was terrified at the size of his multitudes and his armaments, Quinctius made a speech of this kind to the Achaeans: he said that

once, dining in Chalcis at the house of a foreign friend, he had marveled at the quantity of meat, and his host told him that all of it was actually pork, differing only in seasoning and preparation. "So do not you either," he said, "marvel at the king's forces when you hear of lancers and cataphracts and foot-companions and mounted archers: they are all Syrians, differing from one another only in their equipment." To Philopoemen, the Achaean general, who had many cavalry and infantry but was short of money, he joked that "Philopoemen has hands and legs, but no belly" — for in fact Philopoemen was built that way in body as well.

Gnaeus Domitius, whom Scipio the Great placed in his own stead under his brother Lucius in the war against Antiochus, having reconnoitered the enemy's phalanx, and though the officers around him urged him to attack at once, said that the hour was too late to allow them, after cutting down so many tens of thousands and plundering their baggage, to return to their own camp and attend to their needs; he would do the same the next day at the proper hour. And engaging the enemy the following day, he killed fifty thousand of them. Publius Licinius, consul and general, defeated by Perseus, king of the Macedonians, in a cavalry battle, lost two thousand eight hundred men,

some killed, others taken prisoner. When after the battle Perseus sent envoys concerning a truce and peace, the defeated commander ordered that the victor should leave matters concerning himself to the Romans. Paulus Aemilius, standing for a second consulship, had failed to win it; but when the war against Perseus and the Macedonians dragged on because of the inexperience and softness of the generals, they appointed him consul, and he said he was not grateful to them for it —

for he had not sought office as one desiring to rule over them, but had been chosen general as one who was to rule them. Coming home from the forum and finding his little daughter Tertia in tears, he asked the reason; she said that Perseus had died — meaning a little dog by that name — and he said, "By good fortune, my daughter, and I accept the omen." Finding in the camp a great deal of insolence and idle talk among those who were meddling and giving unwanted advice as if they were generals themselves, he ordered them to keep quiet and do nothing but sharpen their swords, and that he would see to everything else. He ordered the night watches to be kept without spear or sword, so that, despairing of being able to defend themselves against the enemy, they would fight all the harder against sleep. Marching through the highlands into Macedonia and seeing the enemy drawn up in battle order,

when Nasica urged him to attack at once, he said, "If I had your youth — but my many experiences forbid me to fight against a phalanx drawn up in order, straight from the march." Having defeated Perseus and holding victory feasts, he said that it took the same skill to make an army most fearsome to enemies and a banquet most pleasant to friends. When Perseus, now a prisoner, tried to avoid being led in the triumph, Paulus said, "That is up to you," giving him the choice of taking his own life. Though immense wealth was found, he took none of it himself, but gave his son-in-law Tubero a silver bowl weighing five pounds as a prize for valor — and this, they say, was the first silver vessel to enter the household of the Aelii. He had had four sons; two of them had earlier been given up in adoption to other families; of the two remaining

in his own household, one died five days before the triumph, at the age of fourteen, and the other died five days after the triumph, at the age of twelve. Coming forward while the people grieved and shared in his sorrow, he said that now he had no fear or danger to feel for his country, since fortune, in venting her retribution for his successes upon his own household, had made him alone bear it on behalf of all.

Cato the Elder, attacking extravagance and luxury before the people, said, "How hard it is to speak to a belly that has no ears." He said he marveled how a city could survive in which a fish sold for more than an ox. Once, denouncing the growing dominance of women, he said, "All men rule their wives, we rule all men, and our wives rule us." He said he would rather do a good deed and receive no thanks for it than commit a wrong and escape punishment for it,

and that he was always ready to grant pardon to all who erred, except himself. Urging magistrates to reprimand wrongdoers, he said that those who have the power to stop wrongdoers, if they fail to stop them, are in effect commanding them to do wrong. He said that of the young he preferred those who blushed to those who turned pale. He said he despised a soldier who, while marching, moved his hands, but while fighting, moved his feet, and who snored louder than he shouted in battle.

He used to say that the worst kind of ruler is one who cannot rule himself. He held that above all each man ought to feel reverence before himself, for no one is ever without himself. Seeing many statues being set up for people, he said, "I would rather have men ask why there is no statue of Cato than why there is one." He urged those in power to be sparing in the use of their authority, so that the power to act would always remain with them. He said that those who take away the honor due to virtue take away virtue itself from the young; and he said that a ruler or judge ought neither to be entreated on behalf of just causes nor to be pressed into abandoning them on behalf of unjust ones. He said that wrongdoing, even if...

...even if it brings no danger to those committing it, it brings danger to everyone. In old age, when many shameful things already attend it, he thought one should not add to them the shame that comes from wickedness. He believed that the angry man differs from the madman only in the length of time. "Those who use good fortune with fairness and moderation are least envied," he said, "for people envy not us but those around us." He said that those who are earnest about ridiculous things will become ridiculous when it comes to serious ones.

He said that fine deeds ought to be followed up with more fine deeds, lest they lose their luster. He used to rebuke citizens who always elected the same men to office: "You will seem," he said, "either to think the office not worth much, or to think that not many men are worthy of it." Of a man who had sold his estates by the sea, he pretended to admire him as stronger than the sea itself: "What the sea can barely flood, this man has swallowed with ease."

When he was campaigning for the censorship and saw the other candidates courting and flattering the masses, he himself cried out that the people needed a harsh physician and a great purge, and that they ought to choose not the most agreeable man but the most inexorable one — and by saying this he was elected before all the others.

Teaching young men to fight with courage, he often said that the word turns more on the sword and the voice than on the hand, and that it is this that terrifies the enemy.

When, at war with the peoples living around the river Baetis, he found himself in danger from the sheer number of the enemy, and the Celtiberians were willing to help for two hundred talents while the Romans would not consent to promise pay to barbarians, he said they were mistaken: for if victorious, they would repay it not from their own funds but from the enemy's; and if defeated, there would be neither anyone left to demand it nor anyone left to pay it.

Though he took more cities, as he himself says, than the number of days he spent among the enemy, he himself took nothing more from enemy territory than what he ate and drank. Having distributed a pound of silver to each of the soldiers, he said it was better that many return from the campaign with silver than that a few return with gold; for commanders in the provinces ought to seek nothing but the growth of their own reputation.

He kept five servants on campaign. One of them, who had bought three captives without Cato's knowledge, hanged himself before coming into his sight, once it became clear he could not escape detection.

When urged by Scipio Africanus to help the Achaean exiles return to their homeland, he pretended to have no concern for the matter; but when, after much discussion in the Senate, he rose and said, "As if we had nothing else to do, we sit here debating about some little old Greek men — whether they are to be carried out by our undertakers or by theirs."

When Postumius Albinus, having written a history in Greek, asked his readers' indulgence, Cato said ironically that indulgence ought indeed to be granted, if he had written it under compulsion, having been ordered to do so by a vote of the Amphictyons.

They say that Scipio the Younger, in the fifty-four years he lived, bought nothing, sold nothing, and built nothing, and left, out of a great estate, only thirty-three pounds of silver and two of gold — and this though he was master of Carthage and had enriched his soldiers more than any other general. Keeping faithfully to Polybius's precept, he made it a rule never to leave the marketplace before he had made some acquaintance and friend, in one way or another, among those he met.

Even while still young he had such a reputation for courage and good sense that Cato the Elder, when asked about the men campaigning at Carthage, among whom Scipio also served, said: "He alone has understanding; the rest flit about like shadows." When he returned to Rome from the campaign, people called on him not out of favor to him but because they expected that through him they would take Carthage quickly and easily. And indeed, once he had made his way onto the wall while the Carthaginians defended it from the citadel, and Polybius advised him to scatter iron caltrops or throw down spiked planks across the middle of the ditch, which was not very deep, so that the enemy could not cross and attack the earthworks, he said it was absurd, now that they had taken the walls and were inside the city, to be arranging things so as not to fight the enemy.

Finding the city full of Greek statues and dedications carried off from Sicily, he had it proclaimed that people from those cities should come and identify and reclaim their property. Of the plunder, he allowed neither slave nor freedman to take anything, nor even to buy anything, though everyone else was carrying off and taking whatever they pleased.

When he was helping his dearest friend Gaius Laelius in his campaign for the consulship, he asked Pompeius whether he too intended to stand for the consulship — this Pompeius was thought to be the son of a flute-player. When the man said he did not intend to stand, but promised also to accompany Laelius and canvass together with him, they trusted him and waited for him — and were deceived, for word came that he was going about the marketplace greeting the citizens on his own behalf. When the others grew indignant, Scipio laughed and said, "What fools we are, as if we were about to summon not men but gods, to have wasted so much time waiting for a flute-player!"

When Appius Claudius, contending with him for the censorship, said that he himself greeted all the Romans by name while Scipio scarcely knew any of them, Scipio replied, "You speak the truth; for my concern has been not to know many, but to be unknown to no one."

He urged the citizens, since they happened to be at war with the Celtiberians, whenever they sent out both legates and tribunes on campaign, to take as witnesses and judges of each man's valor the very men who were fighting the war.

When appointed censor, he took the horse away from a young man who, at a time when Carthage was under siege, had given an extravagant dinner at which he molded a honey-cake into the shape of the city, called it Carthage, and set it out for the guests to plunder. When the young man asked why his horse had been taken from him, Scipio said, "Because you plundered Carthage before I did."

Seeing Gaius Licinius pass by, he said, "I know this man has committed perjury; but since no one is accusing him, I cannot be both his accuser and his judge."

Having been sent out a third time by the Senate, as Clitomachus says, "to observe the insolence and the good order of men, an overseer of cities, nations, and kings," when he came to Alexandria and disembarked, walking with his cloak drawn over his head, the Alexandrians ran about begging him to uncover his face and show it to them, since they longed to see it; and when he uncovered it, they raised a shout and clapped their hands. As the king could barely keep pace with them while they walked, being slowed by idleness and soft living, Scipio quietly whispered to Panaetius, "The Alexandrians have already gained something from our visit here: because of us they have seen their king walking on foot."

His traveling companions were a single philosopher friend, Panaetius, and five servants; and when one of these died abroad, since he did not wish to buy another, he sent for a replacement from Rome.

Since the Numantines were thought to be unconquerable and had defeated many generals, the people appointed Scipio consul a second time for the war against them. Although many were eager to join the campaign, the Senate prevented this too, fearing that Italy would be left empty. They also would not allow him to take money that was readily available, but assigned him the tax revenues instead, which had not yet come due. Scipio said he had no need of money, for his own resources and those of his friends would suffice; but he did complain about the soldiers, for it was a hard war to fight — hard, because if they had been beaten so many times by the courage of the enemy, it meant they were fighting worthy foes, but if by the cowardice of the citizens, it meant they were fighting alongside unworthy men.

When he came to the camp and found much disorder, licentiousness, superstition, and luxury, he at once drove out the diviners, the sacrificers, and the brothel-keepers, and ordered all equipment sent away except a pot, a spit, and an earthenware cup. He allowed those who wished to keep a silver drinking-cup, but no heavier than two pounds; he forbade bathing, and ordered that those who anointed themselves rub each other down, since pack-animals, lacking hands, needed someone else to rub them down. He ordered them to take their midday meal standing, with food requiring no fire, and to dine lying down on bread or simple porridge and roasted or boiled meat. He himself went about wrapped in a plain black cloak, saying he was mourning the army's disgrace.

Taking pack-animals from a tribune named Memmius that were carrying jeweled wine-coolers and cups of Thericlean ware, he said, "For me you are useful for thirty days, and for your country; but for yourself, being such a man for your whole life, you have made yourself useless." When another showed off a finely adorned shield, he said, "The shield is handsome, young man, but it is more fitting for a Roman to place his hopes in his right hand than in his left." When one soldier, after raising the rampart, complained that he was terribly worn out, he said, "Naturally — you trust in that piece of wood more than in your sword." Seeing the recklessness of the enemy, he said he was buying safety with time; for a good general, like a good physician, ought to resort to the cure by iron only as a last necessity.

Nevertheless, attacking the Numantines at the right moment, he put them to flight. When the older men reproached the defeated soldiers, asking why they had fled from men they had so often pursued, one of the Numantines is said to have replied that the sheep were the same as before, but the shepherd was different.

After he had taken Numantia and celebrated a second triumph, he came into conflict with Gaius Gracchus on behalf of the Senate and the allies; and when the people, aggrieved, raised an uproar against him from the rostrum, he said, "The clamor of armies never troubled me — certainly not that of a rabble of men, whom I know Italy to be not a mother but a stepmother." When Gaius's followers shouted for the tyrant to be killed, he said, "Naturally, those who make war on their country want to destroy me first; for it cannot be that Rome should fall while Scipio stands, nor that Scipio should live while Rome has fallen."

Caecilius Metellus, deliberating whether to advance against a fortified position, was told by a centurion that if he lost only ten men he would take the place; he asked the man whether he himself would like to be one of the ten. When one of the younger tribunes asked what he intended to do, he said, "If I thought my own tunic knew this plan of mine, I would take it off and burn it in the fire." Though he had been at war with Scipio while the latter lived, he grieved at his death, ordered his own sons to take up the bier and carry it, and said he owed thanks to the gods on Rome's behalf, that Scipio had not been born among any other people.

Gaius Marius, advancing into public life from an undistinguished family by way of military service, ran for the higher aedileship; and perceiving on the very day of the election that he was losing, he switched to the lower office. Having failed at that too, he still did not give up hope of becoming first among the Romans. Having varicose veins in both legs, he offered them to the surgeon to be cut without being bound, and endured the operation without a groan or so much as a frown; but when the doctor moved to the other leg, he would not allow it, saying the cure was not worth the pain.

When his nephew Lucius, during Marius's second consulship, tried to force himself on one of the young men serving in the army, named Trebonius, and Trebonius killed him, and many brought charges against Trebonius for it, he did not deny killing the officer but stated and proved his reason; whereupon Marius ordered the crown given for valor to be brought, and placed it on Trebonius.

Encamped opposite the Teutones in a place with little water, when his soldiers said they were thirsty, he pointed to a river flowing near the enemy's camp and said, "There is drink for you, to be bought with blood." They called on him to lead them there at once, while their blood was still liquid and not yet all dried up by thirst.

In the wars against the Cimbri, he made a thousand brave men of Camerinum into Romans on the spot, contrary to any law; and to those who objected he said that amid the clash of arms he could not hear the laws.

In the civil war, surrounded by a trench and besieged, he held out, waiting for his own moment. When Pompaedius Silo said to him, "If you are a great general, Marius, come down and fight it out," he replied, "No — if you are a great general, force me to fight it out even against my will."

Catulus Lutatius, encamped by the river Atiso in the Cimbrian war, when the Romans, seeing the barbarians attempting to cross, began to retreat, and he was unable to hold them back, rushed in among the foremost of those running away, so that it might appear they were not fleeing the enemy but following their general.

Sulla, hailed as "the Fortunate," counted two things among his greatest strokes of fortune: his friendship with Metellus Pius, and his not razing Athens but sparing the city.

Gaius Popillius was sent to Antiochus bearing a letter from the Senate ordering him to withdraw his army from Egypt and not seize the kingdom belonging to Ptolemy's orphaned children. As he approached through the camp, Antiochus greeted him warmly from a distance, but Popillius, without returning the greeting, handed over the document; and when, after reading it, Antiochus said he would deliberate and give his answer, Popillius drew a circle around him with his staff and said, "Deliberate and answer right there where you stand." Everyone was struck by the man's resolve, and when Antiochus agreed to do what the Romans wished, only then did Popillius greet him and embrace him.

Lucullus in Armenia, with ten thousand infantry and a thousand cavalry, advanced against Tigranes, who had a hundred and fifty thousand troops, on the day before the Nones of October — the day on which, long before, the army under Caepio had been destroyed by the Cimbri. When someone said that the Romans regarded that day as ill-omened and dreaded it, he replied, "Then let us fight eagerly today, so that we may turn this day too from one of gloom and mourning into one bright and dear to the Romans." When his soldiers were especially afraid of the enemy's armored cavalry, he told them to take courage, for it would be more work to strip these men of their armor than to defeat them. Advancing up the hill first and seeing the movement of the barbarians, he cried out, "We have won, fellow soldiers!" And with no one standing against them, in the pursuit he lost only five Romans killed, while he killed more than a hundred thousand of the enemy.

Gnaeus Pompeius was as much beloved by the Romans as his father had been hated. Still young, he attached himself wholly to Sulla's party, and though holding no office and not yet a senator, he raised many soldiers from Italy. When Sulla summoned him, he refused to show his forces to the commander without spoils and without having drawn blood, and did not come until he had defeated the enemy's generals in many battles. When, sent by Sulla as commander to Sicily, he learned that the soldiers on the march were turning aside to plunder and use violence,

...those who wandered off and roamed about carelessly he punished, but on the swords of those he sent out on missions he affixed his seal. As for the Mamertines, who had taken the opposing side, he was ready to put every one of them to death; but when Sthennius, their popular leader, said that he was acting unjustly in punishing many who were innocent for the sake of one who was guilty—namely himself, since he had persuaded his friends and compelled his enemies to take Marius's side—Pompey, astonished, said he was willing to pardon the Mamertines for having been persuaded by such a man, one who valued his country above his own life, and he released both the city and Sthennius.

Crossing over into Libya against Domitius and defeating him in a great battle, when the soldiers hailed him as imperator he said he would not accept the honor while the enemy's rampart still stood upright. But some of them, though a heavy rain was falling, rushed out and sacked the camp. When he returned, Sulla welcomed him warmly with other honors and was the first to call him "Magnus" (the Great); but when Pompey wished to celebrate a triumph, Sulla would not allow it, since he did not yet belong to the Senate. When Pompey remarked to those present that Sulla did not realize that more people worship the rising sun than the setting one, Sulla cried out,

"Let him triumph!" Servilius, a man of aristocratic temper, was indignant at this, and many of the soldiers pressed hard for the triumph, demanding certain gifts. When Pompey said he would rather give up the triumph than flatter them, Servilius said that now he truly saw a man who was great and worthy of a triumph. Now it was the custom at Rome that when knights had served their legal term of duty,

they would lead their horse into the forum before the two men called censors, and after listing their campaigns and the generals under whom they had served, they would receive the praise or blame they deserved. When Pompey was consul, he himself led his horse down to the censors Gellius and Lentulus; and when they, following custom, asked whether he had served all his campaigns, he said "all of them,"

"under myself as imperator." When he got hold of Sertorius's letters in Spain, which contained correspondence from many leading men inviting Sertorius to Rome for the sake of revolution and a change of government, he burned them all, thereby giving the wicked a chance to repent and become better men. When Phraates, king of the Parthians, sent to him demanding that the Euphrates be used as the boundary, he said that the Romans would use the boundary

that justice required against the Parthians. When Lucius Lucullus, after his campaigns, gave himself over to pleasure and lived extravagantly, and criticized Pompey for craving so much activity beyond his years, Pompey said that indulgence was less fitting for an old man than the exercise of command was unfitting for one below the proper age. Once, when he was ill, his physician ordered him to take a thrush to eat; but his attendants, searching, could not find one, for it was out of

season. Someone said that thrushes could be found the year round at Lucullus's estate. "Well then," he said, "if Lucullus were not so extravagant, would Pompey not have lived?" And dismissing the doctor, he took some ordinary food that was readily available. When a severe grain shortage struck Rome, he was appointed, nominally, overseer of the grain market, but in fact master of land and sea, and he sailed to Libya, Sardinia, and Sicily; and having gathered a great quantity

of grain, he hastened to bring it to Rome. When a great storm arose and the ship captains hesitated, he was the first to board and, ordering the anchor raised, cried out, "To sail is necessary; to live is not necessary." When the quarrel with Caesar was coming into the open, and a certain Marcellinus, one of the men thought to have been advanced by Pompey, had gone over to Caesar's side and made many attacks on him in the Senate, Pompey said, "Are you not ashamed, Marcellinus,"

"to abuse me, when it is through me that you have gone from being speechless to being eloquent, and from being starved to being sick from overeating?" To Cato, who had bitterly attacked him because, though Cato had often warned in advance that Caesar's power and growth were not for the good of the republic, Pompey himself had worked against him, he replied, "Your words are more prophetic, but mine were more the acts of a friend." Speaking frankly about himself, he said that he had obtained every office sooner

than he had expected, and had laid each one down sooner than had been expected. After the battle at Pharsalus, fleeing to Egypt, as he was about to cross from the trireme to the fishing boat sent by the king, he turned to his wife and son and said nothing else but the line of Sophocles: "Whoever goes as a suitor to a tyrant's court is that man's slave, even though he arrives a free man." Then, changing boats,

and being struck with a sword, he groaned once, said nothing further, but covered his face and gave himself up. Cicero the orator, mocked over his name, was urged by his friends to change it, but he said he would make the name of Cicero more famous than those of the Catos, the Catuli, and the Scauri. When he dedicated a silver cup to the gods, he inscribed the first letters of his other names, but in place of "Cicero" he engraved

a chickpea (cicer). Of orators who shouted loudly, he said that from weakness they resorted to shouting, like lame men mounting a horse. When Verres's son, who had made poor use of his good looks, abused Cicero for effeminacy and called him a pervert, Cicero said, "Do you not know that it is proper for children to be abused only within doors?" When Metellus Nepos said to him that

"you have put more men to death as a witness than you have saved as an advocate," he replied, "Yes, for I have more good faith than eloquence." When Metellus asked who his father was, he said, "Your mother has made that question harder for you to answer" than for me—for Metellus's mother was unchaste, and Metellus himself was rather flighty and unsteady, carried about by his impulses. When his teacher of rhetoric, Diodotus,

died, and someone set up a stone raven over his grave, Cicero said this was a fitting recompense, "for he taught this bird to fly, not to speak." Having heard that Vatinius, a man at odds with him and generally worthless, had died, and then learning afterward that he was alive, he said, "May the liar come to a bad end, badly." To a man who was thought to be of Libyan descent, who claimed he could not hear what Cicero was saying, he said, "And yet

your ear is not unpierced." When Castus Popillius, who wished to be thought a legal expert but was in fact ignorant and untalented, was summoned by Cicero as a witness in a certain case, and said he knew nothing, Cicero said, "Perhaps you think you are being asked about points of law." When Hortensius the orator had taken a silver sphinx as payment from Verres, and, when Cicero made some oblique remark to him, said he was inexperienced in solving riddles,

Cicero said, "And yet the sphinx is right there with you." Meeting Voconius, who had three extremely ugly daughters, he quietly remarked to his friends, "He sowed children though Phoebus forbade it." When Faustus, the son of Sulla, because of the great number of his debts, posted a notice of sale of his property, Cicero said, "I welcome this proscription of his more than his father's." When Pompey and Caesar

had come to a parting of ways, he said, "I know whom I am fleeing, though I do not know whom I am fleeing to." And he blamed Pompey for abandoning the city and for imitating Themistocles rather than Pericles, though the circumstances resembled the latter's, not the former's. When he went over to Pompey and then again had second thoughts, and was asked by Pompey where he had left his son-in-law Piso, he said, "With your own father-in-law." When someone changed sides from

Caesar to Pompey, and said he had left his horse behind in his haste and eagerness, Cicero said that the man had made a better decision about the horse than about himself. To one who reported that Caesar's friends were gloomy, he said, "You mean they are ill-disposed toward Caesar." After the battle at Pharsalus, when Pompey had fled and a certain Nonius said that they still had seven eagles among them

and urged confidence for that reason, Cicero said, "Your advice would be good, if we were fighting jackdaws." When Caesar, after his victory, restored with honor the statues of Pompey that had been thrown down, Cicero remarked of him that "by setting up Pompey's statues, Caesar is fixing his own in place." So highly did he value the art of speaking well, and so eagerly did he strive for it, that once, when a case was pending before

the court of the Hundred Men and the day was close at hand, he freed his household slave Eros because he had told him the trial had been postponed to the following day. Gaius Caesar, when he was still a young man fleeing from Sulla, fell in with pirates; and first, when they demanded a certain sum of money, he laughed at the robbers for not knowing whom they held, and promised to pay twice as much; then, while under guard while the ransom was being collected, he ordered them

to keep quiet and be still while he slept. He also composed speeches and poems and read them aloud to the pirates, and called those who did not praise them enough uncultured barbarians, and jokingly threatened to hang them—which, not long after, he actually did; for once the ransom had arrived and he was set free, he gathered men and ships from Asia, seized the pirates, and had them crucified. At Rome, when he entered a contest against Catulus, who held first rank among

the Romans, for the office of Pontifex Maximus, and his mother escorted him to the door, he said, "Today, mother, you will have your son either as Pontifex Maximus or as an exile." Having divorced his wife Pompeia because of the scandal with Clodius, when Clodius was later put on trial over the same affair and Caesar was summoned as a witness, he said nothing unfavorable about his wife; and when the prosecutor asked, "Why then

did you divorce her?" he said, "Because Caesar's wife must be free of even the suspicion of scandal." Reading of the exploits of Alexander, he wept, and said to his friends, "At my age he had already conquered Darius, but I have accomplished nothing yet." Passing through a poor little town in the Alps, when his friends wondered, half in jest, whether there too there were factions

and rivalries for the first place, he stopped, grew thoughtful, and said, "I would rather be first here than second in Rome." Of bold undertakings, he said that great and risky ones ought to be carried out, not merely deliberated about. And he crossed the river Rubicon from his Gallic province against Pompey, saying, "Let the die be cast." When Pompey fled toward the sea from

Rome, and Metellus, who was in charge of the treasury, tried to prevent Caesar from taking money and shut the treasury, Caesar threatened to kill him; and when Metellus was terrified, he said, "This, young man, was harder for me to say than it would be to do." When his soldiers were slow in crossing from Brundisium to Dyrrhachium, he slipped away from everyone, boarded a small boat, and tried to cross the sea alone;

and when the boat was being swamped by the waves, he revealed himself to the helmsman and cried out, "Trust to fortune, and know that you carry Caesar." On that occasion he was prevented from crossing, since the storm grew violent and his soldiers ran to him in great distress, fearing that he was waiting for another army because he distrusted them. When a battle was fought and Pompey, though victorious, did not follow up his advantage but withdrew into his camp, Caesar said, "Today

the victory belonged to the enemy, but they have no one who knows how to win it." At Pharsalus, when Pompey had ordered his line of battle to stand its ground and await the enemy's charge, Caesar said he had made a mistake in relaxing the intensity and momentum his soldiers had gained from their headlong, inspired charge. Having defeated Pharnaces of Pontus at the first assault, he wrote to his friends, "I came, I saw, I conquered."

After the rout in Libya of Scipio's forces and Cato's death by his own hand, he said, "Cato, I begrudge you your death, for you too begrudged me the saving of your life." When some, suspicious of Antony and Dolabella, urged him to be on his guard, he said he did not fear those fat and long-haired men, but rather those thin, pale ones—pointing to Brutus and

Cassius. When a conversation arose at dinner about what kind of death was best, he said, "The unexpected one." Caesar, the first to be called Augustus, while still a young man, demanded from Antony twenty-five million drachmas out of the estate of the elder Caesar, after his murder, from the property which Antony had transferred to his own house, wishing to give back to the Romans what Caesar had bequeathed to them—seventy-five drachmas to each citizen. But when Antony kept

the money and told him to forget about demanding it, if he were wise, he put his own inheritance up for public auction and sold it; and by paying out the gift he won for himself the goodwill, and for Antony the hatred, of the citizens. When Rhoemetalces, king of the Thracians, who had gone over from Antony to his side, behaved without restraint at drinking parties and was offensively insistent in reminding him of their alliance, Caesar, drinking a toast to one

of the other kings, said, "I love treachery, but I do not praise traitors." When the people of Alexandria, after the city's capture, expected to suffer the worst, he went up onto the platform, and, bringing forward Arius the Alexandrian, said he would spare the city, first because of its size and beauty, second because of its founder Alexander, and third for the sake of his friend Arius.

Hearing that Eros, the administrator of affairs in Egypt, had bought a quail that was undefeated and the champion of all fighting quails, and had roasted and eaten it, he sent for him and questioned him; and when the man confessed, he ordered him nailed to a ship's mast. In Sicily he appointed Arius as administrator in place of Theodorus; and when someone handed him a note on which was written, "Theodorus of Tarsus is bald, or a thief:

what do you think?" Caesar read it and wrote underneath, "I think so." From Maecenas, his companion in life, he received each year on his birthday the gift of a cup. When Athenodorus the philosopher asked, because of his old age, to be allowed to go home, he granted the request. But when Athenodorus, embracing him in farewell, said, "Caesar, whenever you are angry, say and do nothing until you have gone through the twenty-four letters of the alphabet to

yourself," Caesar took hold of his hand and said, "I still have need of you present," and kept him for a whole year, saying, "There is a safe reward even for silence." Hearing that Alexander, at thirty-two years old, having conquered most of the world, was at a loss as to what he should do with the rest of his life, he wondered that Alexander did not consider it a greater task

to set in order what he already possessed than to acquire his empire in the first place. Having written the law concerning adulterers, in which it is determined how those accused should be tried and how those convicted should be punished, he then, carried away by anger, struck with his own hands a young man who was accused in connection with his daughter Julia; and when the young man cried out, "You made the law, Caesar," he was so filled with remorse that he refrained from acting on that impulse that day.

... so that he excused himself from that day's dinner.

When he sent Gaius, his grandson, to Armenia, he prayed to the gods that Pompey's goodwill, Alexander's daring, and his own fortune might attend him. He used to say he would leave the Romans as successor to the empire a man who had never twice deliberated about the same matter — meaning Tiberius.

Wishing to quiet the young men of rank who were making a disturbance, when they paid no heed but kept on making noise, he said, "Listen, young men, to an old man to whom old men listened when he was young."

When the Athenian people seemed to have committed some offense, he wrote from Aegina that he supposed they were not unaware that he was angry, for otherwise he would not be wintering in Aegina; but beyond this he neither said nor did anything else to them.

One of the accusers of Eurycles spoke with unsparing and excessive frankness, and was carried so far as to say something like this: "If these things do not seem serious to you, Caesar, order him to give me back the seventh book of Thucydides." At this Augustus grew angry and ordered the man led away; but on learning that he was the last surviving descendant of Brasidas, he sent for him, and after a mild rebuke let him go.

When Piso was carefully building his house from the foundations up to the very roof, Augustus said, "You make me cheerful, building like this, as though Rome were going to last forever."

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