their spoil; for when they collected the booty no account was taken of
iron or brass, such an abundance was there of silver and gold; for they
crossed the river and captured the enemy's camp. Of the captives, the
greater part were stolen by the soldiers, and sold privately, but a body
of five thousand was brought into the common stock. Two hundred chariots
also were taken. The most glorious and magnificent spectacle of all was
the tent of Timoleon, round which booty of every kind was piled up in
heaps, among which were a thousand corslets of exquisite workmanship,
and ten thousand shields. As they were but few to gather the plunder of
so many, and as they fell in with such riches, it was only on the third
day that they managed to erect a trophy of their victory. Together with
the despatch announcing his success, Timoleon sent home to Corinth the
finest of the arms and armour, desiring to make his country envied by
all men, when they should see, in that alone of all Greek cities, that
the most important shrines were not adorned with Grecian spoils, nor
with offerings obtained by the slaughter of men of their own race and
blood, dismal memorials at best, but with spoils of the barbarian, whose
inscriptions bore noble testimony to the justice, as well as the courage
of the victors, telling how the Corinthians and their general, Timoleon,
having freed the Greeks who dwell in Sicily from the yoke of Carthage,
set up these thank-offerings to the gods.
XXX. After the victory he left the paid force in the enemy's country, to
ravage and plunder the Carthaginian dominions, and himself proceeded to
Syracuse. He now ordered out of the island those mercenary troops by
whom he had been deserted before the battle; and even forced them to
quit Sicily before sunset. These men crossed into Italy and perished
there at the hands of the Bruttians, who broke their word to them and
betrayed them. This was the penalty which Heaven imposed on them for
their desertion. But Mamercus, the despot of Catana, and Hiketes, either
through disgust at Timoleon's successes, or else fearing him as a man
not likely to keep faith with despots, made an alliance with Carthage,
as they said that the Carthaginians, unless they wished to be utterly
driven out of Sicily, must send a competent force and a general. Gisco
the son of Hanno sailed thither with seventy ships, and also with a
force of Greek mercenary soldiers, whom the Carthaginians had never used
before; but now they were full of admiration for the Greeks, as being
the most warlike and invincible of men. Having effected a junction of
their forces in the territory of Messina, they cut to pieces a body of
four hundred foreign soldiers whom Timoleon sent against them; and in
the Carthaginian dominion they laid an ambush near the place called
Hietae, and cut off the hired troops of Euthymus the Leukadian. Both
these circumstances made the good fortune of Timoleon more renowned. For
these were some of the men who under Philomelus of Phokis and Onomarchus
sacrilegiously took Delphi, and shared in the plunder of the temple. As
all men loathed them and shrank from them as from men under a curse,
they wandered about Peloponnesus until Timoleon, being unable to get any
other soldiers, enlisted them in his service. When they reached Sicily,
they were victorious in every battle which they fought where he was
present. After the most important struggles of the war were over, they
were sent to reinforce others, and so perished and came to nought; and
not all at once, but piecemeal, as if their avenging fate had given way
to Timoleon's good fortune for a season, lest the good should suffer
from the punishment of the wicked. Thus the kindness of the gods towards
Timoleon was no less seen and wondered at in his failures than in his
successes.
XXXI. The people of Syracuse were much nettled by the insulting jests
passed upon them by the despots. Mamercus, who plumed himself on his
poems and tragedies, gave himself great airs after conquering the
mercenaries, and when he hung up their shields as offerings to the gods,
he inscribed this insolent elegiac couplet upon them.
"These, with purple wrought, and ivory, gold, and amber,
We with our simple shields conquered and laid in the dust."
After these events, while Timoleon was on a campaign in the direction of
Kalauria, Hiketes invaded the Syracusan territory, did much damage and
insult, and retired loaded with spoil, past the very walls of Kalauria,
despising Timoleon, who had but a small force with him. He, however, let
him pass, but then pursued with his cavalry and light troops. Hiketes,
perceiving this, halted after crossing the river Damyrias, and drew up
his troops along the farther bank to dispute the passage, encouraged to
do so by the different nature of the ford, and the steepness of the
hills on either hand. Now a strange rivalry and contest arose among
Timoleon's captains, which delayed their onset. No one chose to let any
one else lead the way against the enemy, but each man wished to be
first; so that their crossing was conducted in a disorderly fashion,
each man trying to push by and outstrip the rest. Hereupon Timoleon,
wishing to choose the leaders by lot, took a ring from each. These he
threw into his own cloak, mixed them up, and showed the first which he
drew out, which happened to be engraved with the figure of a trophy of
victory. When the young men saw this they raised a shout of joy, and
would not wait for the rest to be drawn, but each man, as fast as he
could, rode through the river and set upon the enemy. Their assault was
irresistible; the enemy fled, all of them throwing away their shields,
and with the loss of a hundred men.
XXXII. Soon after this, while Timoleon was campaigning in the Leontine
country, he took Hiketes alive, with his son Eupolemus, and Euthymus,
the commander of his cavalry. The soldiers seized and bound them, and
led them into Timoleon's presence. Hiketes and his son were put to death
as despots and traitors; nor did Euthymus meet with compassion, though
he was a man of renown in athletic contest, and of great personal
bravery, because of a scoffing speech of which he was accused against
the Corinthians. The story goes that he was addressing the people of
Leontini on the subject of the Corinthian invasion, and told them that
there was nothing to be alarmed at if
"Corinthian ladies have come out from home."[A]
Thus it is that most people seem to suffer more from hard words than
hard deeds, and are more excited by insult than by actual hurt. What we
do to our enemies in war is done of necessity, but the evil we say of
them seems to spring from an excess of spite.
[Footnote A: A line in the Medea of Euripides. The point of the joke
depends on the punctuation, but cannot be kept in translation.]
XXXIII. On Timoleon's return the Syracusans brought the family and
daughters of Hiketes before the public assembly for trial, and condemned
them to death. And this, methinks, is the most heartless of Timoleon's
actions, that for want of a word from him these poor creatures should
have perished. He seems not to have interfered, and to have let the
people give full vent to their desire to avenge Dion, who dethroned
Dionysius. For Hiketes was the man who threw Dion's wife Arete alive
into the sea, with her sister Aristomache and her little son, as is told
in the Life of Dion.
XXXIV. After this he marched against Mamercus at Catana. He beat him in
a pitched battle near the river Abolus, routing him with a loss of two
thousand men, no small part of whom belonged to the Phoenician
contingent under Gisco. Hereupon, at the request of the Carthaginians,
he made peace, stipulating that they should hold the country beyond the
river Lykus, and that those who wished should be allowed to have it and
go to reside at Syracuse, with their families and property, and also
that they should give up their alliance with the despots. In despair at
this Mamercus sailed to Italy, to try to bring the Lucanians against
Timoleon and the Syracusans; but he was deserted by his followers, who
turned their ships back, sailed to Syracuse, and surrendered Catana to
Timoleon. Mamercus now was forced to take refuge in Messina with Hippo,
the despot there. But Timoleon came and besieged it both by sea and
land. Hippo endeavoured to escape on a ship, and was taken. The people
of Messina, to whom he was delivered up, brought every one, even the
boys from school, into the theatre, to witness that most salutary
spectacle, a tyrant meeting with his deserts. He was put to death with
torture; but Mamercus surrendered himself to Timoleon on condition that
he should have a fair trial before the people of Syracuse, and that
Timoleon should say nothing against him. When he was brought to Syracuse
he was brought before the people, and tried to deliver a long
premeditated speech to them, but meeting with interruptions and seeing
that the assembly was inexorable he flung away his cloak and rushed
across the theatre, striking his head against a stone step with the
intention of killing himself. However he failed, and paid the penalty of
his crimes by suffering the death of a pirate.
XXXV. In this fashion the despotisms were put down by Timoleon, and the
wars finished. The whole island, which had become a mere wilderness
through the constant wars, and was grown hateful to the very natives,
under his administration became so civilized and desirable a country
that colonists sailed to it from those very places to which its own
citizens had formerly betaken themselves to escape from it. For Akragas
and Gela, large cities, which after the war with Athens had been
destroyed by the Carthaginians, were now repeopled; the former colonists
led by Megellus and Pheristus, from Elea on the south coast of Italy,
and the latter by a party led by Gorgus, who sailed from Keos and
collected together the former citizens.
When these cities were being reorganised Timoleon not only afforded them
peace and safety, but also gave them great assistance, and showed so
great an interest in them as to be loved and respected by them as their
real Founder. The other cities also all of them looked upon him with the
same feelings, so that no peace could be made by them, no laws
established, no country divided among settlers, no constitutional
changes made that seemed satisfactory, unless he had a hand in them,
and arranged them just as an architect, when a building is finished,
gives some graceful touches which adorn the whole.
XXXVI. There were many Greeks, in his lifetime, who became great, and
did great things, such as Timotheus, and Agesilaus, and Pelopidas, and
Timoleon's great model, Epameinondas. But these men's actions produced a
glory which was involved in much strain and toil, and some of their
deeds have incurred censure, and even been repented of. Whereas those of
Timoleon, if we except the terrible affair of his brother, have nothing
in them to which we cannot apply, like Timaeus, that verse of
Sophocles--
"Ye gods, what Venus or what grace divine
Took part in this."
For as in the poetry of Antimachus, and the paintings of Dionysius, the
Kolophonians, we find a certain vigour and power, yet think them forced
in expression, and produced with much labour, while the paintings of
Nikomachus and the verses of Homer, besides their other graces and
merits, have the charm of seeming to have been composed easily and
without effort, so also the campaigns of Timoleon, when compared with
the laborious and hardly contested ones of Epameinondas or Agesilaus,
seem to have, besides their glory, a wonderful ease, which property is
not so much to be attributed to good luck as to prosperous valour. He,
however, ascribed all his successes to Fortune, for in writing to his
friends at home, and in his public speeches to the Syracusans, he
frequently expressed his thankfulness to this goddess, who, having
determined to save Sicily, had chosen to ascribe to him the credit of
doing it. In his house he built a chapel to Automatia,--the goddess
under whose auspices blessings and glory came as it were of themselves.
To her he offered sacrifices, and consecrated his house to her. He lived
in a house which the Syracusans had bestowed upon him as a special prize
for his successes as general, and also the most beautiful and pleasant
country seat, where indeed he spent most of his leisure time with his
wife and children, whom he had sent for from Corinth. For he never
returned to Corinth, nor mixed himself up in the troubles of Greece, nor
did he expose himself to the hatred of political faction, which is the
rock upon which great generals commonly split, in their insatiate thirst
for honour and power; but he remained in Sicily, enjoying the blessings
of which he was the author; the greatest of which was to see so many
cities, and so many tens of thousands, all made happy and prosperous by
his means.
XXXVII. But since, as Simonides says, all larks must have crests, and
all republics sycophants, so two of the popular leaders, Laphystius and
Demaenetus, attacked Timoleon. When Laphystius was insisting on his
giving bail for some lawsuit, he would not permit the people to hoot at
him or stop him; for he said that all his labours and dangers had been
endured to obtain for every Syracusan the right of appealing to the
laws. Demaenetus made many attacks in the public assembly on his
generalship; but he made him no answer except to declare his
thankfulness to the gods for having granted his prayer that he might see
all Syracusans in possession of liberty of speech.
Though he confessedly had performed the greatest and most glorious
actions of any Greek of his time, and though he had gained the glory of
having alone done that which the orators in their speeches at great
public meetings used to urge the entire nation to attempt, he was
fortunately removed from the troubles which fell upon ancient Greece,
and saved from defiling his hands with the blood of his countrymen. His
courage and conduct were shown at the expense of barbarians and despots;
his mildness of temper was experienced by Greeks; he was able to erect
the trophies for most of his victories, without causing tears and
mourning to the citizens; but nevertheless, within eight years, he
restored Sicily to its native inhabitants, freed from the scourges which
had afflicted it for so long a time and seemed so ineradicable. When
advanced in years he suffered from a dimness of sight, which soon became
total blindness. He had done nothing to cause it, and had met with no
accident, but the disease was congenital, and in time produced a
cataract. Many of his relatives are said in a similar fashion to have
lost their sight when advanced in years. But Athanis tells us that
during the war with Hippo and Mamercus, at the camp at Mylae, his
eyesight became affected, and that this was noticed by all, but that he
did not on that account desist from the siege, but persevered in the
war, till he captured the two despots; but as soon as he returned to
Syracuse he resigned his post of commander-in-chief, begging the
citizens to allow him to do so, as the war had been brought to a happy
conclusion.
XXXVIII. That he endured his misfortune without repining is not to be
wondered at; but one must admire the respect and love shown him when
blind by the people of Syracuse. They constantly visited him, and
brought with them any strangers that might be staying with them, both to
his town and country house, to show them their benefactor, glorying in
the fact that he had chosen to spend his life amongst them, and had
scorned the magnificent reception which his exploits would have ensured
him, had he returned to Greece. Of the many important tributes to his
worth none was greater than the decree of the Syracusans that whenever
they should be engaged in war with foreign tribes, they would have a
Corinthian for their general. Great honour was also reflected upon him
by their conduct in the public assembly; for, though they managed
ordinary business by themselves, on the occasion of any important debate
they used to call him in. Then he would drive through the market-place
into the theatre; and when the carriage in which he sat was brought in,
the people would rise and salute him with one voice. Having returned
their greeting, and allowed a short time for their cheers and blessings,
he would hear the disputed point debated, and then give his opinion.
When this had been voted upon his servants would lead his carriage out
of the theatre, while the citizens, cheering and applauding him as he
went, proceeded to despatch their other business without him.
XXXIX. Cherished in his old age with such respect and honour, as the
common father of his country, Timoleon at length, after a slight
illness, died. Some time was given for the Syracusans to prepare his
funeral, and for neighbours and foreigners to assemble, so that the
ceremony was performed with great splendour. The bier, magnificently
adorned, and carried by young men chosen by lot, passed over the place
where once the castle of Dionysius had been pulled down. The procession
was joined by tens of thousands of men and women, whose appearance was
gay enough for a festival, for they all wore garlands and white robes.
Their lamentations and tears mingled with their praises of the deceased
showed that they were not performing this as a matter of mere outward
respect and compliance with a decree, but that they expressed real
sorrow and loving gratitude. At last, when the bier was placed upon the
pyre, Demetrius, the loudest voiced of the heralds at that time, read
aloud the following:--
"The Syracusan people solemnise, at the cost of two hundred minae, the
funeral of this man, the Corinthian Timoleon, son of Timodemus. They
have passed a vote to honour him for all future time with festival
matches in music, horse and chariot races, and gymnastics, because,
after having put down the despots, subdued the foreign enemy, and
recolonized the greatest among the ruined cities, he restored to the
Sicilian Greeks their constitution and laws."[A]
[Footnote A: Grote.]
They buried him in the market-place, and afterwards surrounded the spot
with a colonnade, and built a palastra in it for the young men to
practise in, and called it the Timoleonteum; and, living under the
constitution and laws which he established, they passed many years in
prosperity.
LIFE OF AEMILIUS.
II.[A] Most writers agree that the Aemilian was one of the most noble
and ancient of the patrician families of Rome. Those who tell us that
King Numa was a pupil of Pythagoras, narrate also that Mamercus, the
founder of this family, was a son of that philosopher, who for his
singular grace and subtlety of speech was surnamed Aemilius. Most of the
members of the family who gained distinction by their valour, were also
fortunate, and even the mishap of Lucius Paullus at Cannae bore ample
testimony to his prudence and valour. For since he could not prevail
upon his colleague to refrain from battle, he, though against his better
judgment, took part in it, and disdained to fly; but when he who had
begun the contest fled from it, he stood firm, and died fighting the
enemy. This Aemilius had a daughter, who married Scipio the Great, and a
son who is the subject of this memoir. Born in an age which was rendered
illustrious by the valour and wisdom of many distinguished men, he
eclipsed them all, though he followed none of the studies by which young
men were then gaining themselves a reputation, but chose a different
path. He did not practise at the bar, nor could he bring himself to
court the favour of the people by the greetings, embraces, and
professions of friendship to which most men used to stoop to obtain
popularity. Not that he was by nature unfitted for such pursuits; but he
considered it better to gain a reputation for courage, justice, and
truth, in which he soon outshone his contemporaries.
[Footnote A: In Sintenis's text the chapter with which this life usually
begins is prefixed to the Life of Timoleon.]
III. The first honourable office for which he was a candidate was that
of aedile, for which he was elected against twelve others, who, they
say, all afterwards became consuls. When chosen a priest of the college
of Augurs, whom the Romans appoint to watch and register the omens
derived from the flight of birds, or the signs of the heavens, he so
carefully applied himself to learning the ancient customs and religion
of his ancestors, that the priesthood, hitherto merely considered as an
empty title of honour and sought after for that reason only, became
regarded as the sublimest craft of all, confirming the saying of the
philosophers, that holiness consists in a knowledge of how to serve the
gods. Under him everything was done with both zeal and skill. He
neglected all other duties, when engaged upon these, neither omitting
any part nor adding any, arguing with his companions, when they blamed
him for his care about trifles, that though a man might think that
heaven was merciful and forgiving of negligences, yet that habitual
disregard and overlooking of such points was dangerous for the state,
seeing that no one ever begins till some flagrant breach of the law to
disturb the constitution, but those who are careless of accuracy in
small things soon begin to neglect the most important. He was no less
severe in exacting and maintaining military discipline than with
religious observances, never forgetting the general in the demagogue,
nor, as many then did, endeavouring to make his first command lead to a
second by indulgence and affability to his troops, but, like a priest
expounding mysteries, he carefully taught them everything requisite for
a campaign, and, by his severity to the careless and disobedient,
restored the former glory to his country; for he seemed to think victory
over the enemy was merely a subordinate incident in the great work of
disciplining his fellow-citizens.
IV. When the Romans were at war with Antiochus the Great, and all their
most experienced generals were employed against him, there arose another
war in the west of Europe, in consequence of revolutionary movements in
Spain. Aemilius was appointed commander to conduct this war, not with
six lictors only, like ordinary generals, but twelve, so as to give him
consular authority. He defeated the barbarians in two pitched battles,
with a loss of nearly thirty thousand. The credit of this exploit
belongs peculiarly to the general, who made such use of the advantage of
the ground, and the ford over a certain river, as to render victory an
easy matter for his soldiers. He also took two hundred and fifty cities,
which opened their gates to him. Having established a lasting peace in
his province he returned to Rome, not having gained a penny by his
command. For he was careless of money-making, though he spent his
fortune without stint; and it was so small, that after his death it
hardly sufficed to make up the dower of his wife.
V. He married Papiria, the daughter of Papirius Maso, a consular; and
after living with her for a considerable time, divorced her, though he
had by her an illustrious family, for she was the mother of the renowned
Scipio, and of Fabius Maximus. No reason for their separation has come
down to us, but there is much truth in that other story about a divorce,
that some Roman put away his wife; and his friends then blamed him,
saying, "Is she not chaste? is she not beautiful? is she not fruitful?"
He, stretching out his shoe, said, "Is it not beautiful? is it not new?
But none of you can tell where it pinches me. In fact, some men divorce
their wives for great and manifest faults, yet the little but constant
irritation which proceeds from incompatible tempers and habits, though
unnoticed by the world at large, does gradually produce between married
people breaches which cannot be healed."