ely 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 Lacedaemonians. 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 Caesar, 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 Caesar, or
else to have acknowledged him as his superior and submitted to him,
for Caesar was both his fellow-countryman and his relative. Yet, after
having violently objected to the prorogation of Caesar'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