I. As both these men's lives are now before us, let us briefly
recapitulate them, observing as we do so the points in which they
differ from one another. These are as follows:--First, Pompeius
obtained his power and renown by the most strictly legitimate means,
chiefly by his own exertions when assisting Sulla in the liberation of
Italy; while Agesilaus obtained the throne in defiance of both human
and divine laws, for he declared Leotychides to be a bastard, although
his brother had publicly recognised him as his own son, and he also by
a quibble evaded the oracle about a lame reign.
Secondly, Pompeius both respected Sulla while he lived, gave his body
an honourable burial, in spite of Lepidus, when he died, and married
Sulla's daughter to his own son Faustus; while Agesilaus, on a
trifling pretext, disgraced and ruined Lysander. Yet Sulla gave
Pompeius nothing more than he possessed himself, whereas Lysander made
Agesilaus king of Sparta, and leader of the united armies of Greece.
Thirdly, the political wrong-doings of Pompeius were chiefly committed
to serve his relatives, Cæsar and Scipio; while Agesilaus saved
Sphodrias from the death which he deserved for his outrage upon the
Athenians merely to please his son, and vigorously supported Phœbidas
when he committed a similar breach of the peace against the Thebans.
And generally, we may say that while Pompeius only injured the Romans
through inability to refuse the demands of friends, or through
ignorance, Agesilaus ruined the Lacedæmonians by plunging them into
war with Thebes, to gratify his own angry and quarrelsome temper.
II. If it be right to attribute the disasters which befel either of
those men to some special ill-luck which attended them, the Romans had
no reason whatever to suspect any such thing of Pompeius; but
Agesilaus, although the Lacedæmonians well knew the words of the
oracle, yet would not allow them to avoid "a lame reign." Even if
Leotychides had been proved a thousand times to be a bastard, the
family of Eurypon could have supplied Sparta with a legitimate and
sound king, had not Lysander, for the sake of Agesilaus, deceived them
as to the true meaning of the oracle. On the other hand, we have no
specimen of the political ingenuity of Pompeius which can be compared
with that admirable device of Agesilaus, when he readmitted the
survivors of the battle of Leuktra to the privileges of Spartan
citizens, by permitting the laws to sleep for one day. Pompeius did
not even think it his duty to abide by the laws which he had himself
enacted, but broke them to prove his great power to his friends.
Agesilaus, when forced either to abolish the laws or to ruin his
friends, discovered an expedient by which the laws did his friends no
hurt, and yet had not to be abolished in order to save them. I also
place to the credit of Agesilaus that unparalleled act of obedience,
when on receiving a despatch from Sparta he abandoned the whole of his
Asian enterprise. For Agesilaus did not, like Pompeius, enrich the
state by his own exploits, but looking solely to the interests of his
country, he gave up a position of greater glory and power than any
Greek before or since ever held, with the single exception of
Alexander.
III. Looking at them from another point of view, I suppose that even
Xenophon himself would not think of comparing the number of the
victories won by Pompeius, the size of the armies which he commanded,
and that of those which he defeated, with any of the victories of
Agesilaus; although Xenophon has written so admirably upon other
subjects, that he seems to think himself privileged to say whatever he
pleases about the life of his favourite hero. I think also that the
two men differ much in their treatment of their enemies. The Greek
wished to sell the Thebans for slaves, and to drive the Messenians
from their country, although Thebes was the mother city of Sparta,
and the Messenians sprang from the same stock as the Lacedæmonians. In
his attempts to effect this, he all but lost Sparta herself, and did
lose the Spartan empire; while Pompeius even gave cities to be
inhabited by such of the Mediterranean pirates as abandoned that mode
of life; and when Tigranes the king of Armenia was in his power, he
did not lead him in his triumph, but chose rather to make him an ally
of Rome; observing, that he preferred an advantage which would last
for all time to the glory which only endured for a single day.
If, however, we place the chief glory of a general in feats of arms
and strategy, the Laconian will be found greatly to excel the Roman.
Agesilaus did not abandon Sparta even when it was attacked by seventy
thousand men, when he had but few troops with which to defend it, and
those too all disheartened by their recent defeat at Leuktra.
Pompeius, on hearing that Cæsar, with only five thousand three hundred
men, had taken a town in Italy, left Rome in terror, either yielding
to this small force like a coward, or else falsely supposing it to be
more numerous than it was. He carefully carried off his own wife and
children, but left the families of his partizans unprotected in Rome,
when he ought either to have fought for the city against Cæsar, or
else to have acknowledged him as his superior and submitted to him,
for Cæsar was both his fellow-countryman and his relative. Yet, after
having violently objected to the prorogation of Cæsar's term of office
as consul, he put it in his power to capture Rome itself, and to say
to Metellus that he regarded him and all the rest of the citizens as
prisoners of war.
IV. Agesilaus, when he was the stronger, always forced his enemy to
fight, and when weaker, always avoided a battle. By always practising
this, the highest art of a general, he passed through his life without
a single defeat; whereas Pompeius was unable to make use of his
superiority to Cæsar by sea, and was forced by him to hazard
everything on the event of a land battle; for as soon as Cæsar had
defeated him, he at once obtained possession of all Pompeius's
treasure, supplies, and command of the sea, without gaining which he
must inevitably have been defeated, even without a battle. Pompeius's
excuse for his conduct is, in truth, his severest condemnation. It is
very natural and pardonable for a young general to be influenced by
clamours and accusations of remissness and cowardice, so as to abandon
the course which he had previously decided upon as the safest; but
that the great Pompeius, of whom the Romans used to say that the camp
was his home, and that he only made an occasional campaign in the
senate house, at a time when his followers called the consuls and
generals of Rome traitors and rebels, and when they knew that he was
in possession of absolute uncontrolled power, and had already
conducted so many campaigns with such brilliant success as
commander-in-chief--that he should be moved by the scoffs of a
Favonius or a Domitius, and hazard his army and his life lest they
should call him Agamemnon, is a most discreditable supposition. If he
were so sensitive on the point of honour, he ought to have made a
stand at the very beginning, and fought a battle in defence of Rome,
not first to have retreated, giving out that he was acting with a
subtlety worthy of Themistokles himself, and then to have regarded
every day spent in Thessaly without fighting as a disgrace. The plain
of Pharsalia was not specially appointed by heaven as the arena in
which he was to contend with Cæsar for the empire of the world, nor
was he summoned by the voice of a herald either to fight or to avow
himself vanquished. There were many plains, and innumerable cities and
countries which his command of the sea would have enabled him to
reach, if he had wished to imitate Fabius Maximus, Marius, Lucullus,
or Agesilaus himself, who resisted the same kind of clamour at Sparta,
when his countrymen wished to fight the Thebans and protect their
native land; while in Egypt he endured endless reproaches, abuse, and
suspicion from Nektanebis because he forbade him to fight, and by
consistently carrying out his own judicious policy saved the Egyptians
against their will. He not only guided Sparta safely through that
terrible crisis, but was enabled to win a victory over the Thebans in
the city itself, which he never could have done had he yielded to the
entreaties of the Lacedæmonians to fight when their country was first
invaded. Thus it happened that Agesilaus was warmly praised by those
whose opinions he had overruled, while Pompeius made mistakes to
please his friends, and afterwards was reproached by them for what he
had done. Some historians tell us, however, that he was deceived by
his father-in-law, Scipio, who with the intention of embezzling and
converting to his own use the greater part of the treasure which
Pompeius brought from Asia, urged him to fight as soon as possible, as
though there was likely to be a scarcity of money. In these respects,
then, we have reviewed their respective characters.
V. Pompeius went to Egypt of necessity, fleeing for his life; but
Agesilaus went there with the dishonourable purpose of acting as
general for the barbarians, in order that he might employ the money
which he earned by that means in making war upon the Greeks. We blame
the Egyptians for their conduct to Pompeius; but the Egyptians have
equal reason to complain of the conduct of Agesilaus towards
themselves; for though Pompeius trusted them and was betrayed, yet
Agesilaus deserted the man who trusted him, and joined the enemies of
those whom he went out to assist.