glectful of his own honour than he was of
the interests of his country. After this he was forced against his
will into the war with Syracuse, in which he seems to have imagined
that his army would capture the city by remaining before it doing
nothing, and not by vigorous attacks. No doubt it is a great testimony
to the esteem in which he was held by his countrymen, that he was
always opposed to war and unwilling to act as general, and was
nevertheless always forced by them to undertake that office: whereas
Crassus, who always wished for an independent command, never obtained
one except in the servile war, and then only because all the other
generals, Pompeius, Metellus, and Lucullus, were absent. Yet at that
time Crassus was at the height of his power and reputation: but his
friends seem to have thought him, as the comic poet has it,

"Most excellent, save in the battle-field."

And in his case also, the Romans gained no advantage from his
ambitious desire of command. The Athenians sent Nikias to Sicily
against his will, and Crassus led the Romans to Parthia against their
will. Nikias suffered by the actions of the Athenians, while Rome
suffered by the actions of Crassus.

IV. However, in their last moments we incline rather to praise Nikias
than to blame Crassus. Nikias, a skilful and experienced commander,
did not share the rash hopes of his countrymen, but never thought that
Sicily could be conquered, and dissuaded them from making the attempt.
Crassus, on the other hand, urged the Romans to undertake the war with
Parthia, representing the conquest of that country as an easy
operation, which he nevertheless failed to effect. His ambition was
vast. Caesar had conquered the Gauls, Germans, Britons, and all the
west of Europe, and Crassus wished in his turn to march eastward as
far as the Indian Ocean, and to conquer all those regions of Asia
which Pompeius and Lucullus, two great men and actuated by a like
desire for conquest, had previously aspired to subdue. Yet they also
met with a like opposition. When Pompeius was given an unlimited
command in the East, the appointment was opposed by the Senate, and
when Caesar routed thirty thousand Germans, Cato proposed that he
should be delivered up to the vanquished, and that thus the anger of
the gods should be turned away from the city upon the author of so
great a crime as he had committed by breaking his word. Yet the Romans
slighted Cato's proposals and held a so