their
kings, because they were not king-like but worthless men. If then vice
be disgraceful even in the nobly born, it follows that virtue does not
depend upon birth, but is honoured for itself.

The crimes of Lysander were committed for, those of Sulla against, his
friends. Indeed, what Lysander did wrong was done chiefly on behalf of
his friends, as, in order to establish them securely in their various
despotic governments, he caused many of their political opponents to
be put to death. Sulla, on the other hand, reduced the army of
Pompeius and the fleet which he himself had given to Dolabella to
command, merely to gratify his private spite. When Lucretius Ofella
sued for the consulship as the reward of many great exploits, he
ordered him to be put to death before his face, and thus made all men
fear and hate him by his barbarous treatment of his most intimate
friends.

III. Their several esteem for pleasure and for riches prove still more
clearly that Lysander was born to command men; Sulla to tyrannize over
them. The former, although he rose to such an unparalleled height of
power never was betrayed by it into any acts of insolent caprice, and
there never was a man to whom the well-known proverb

"Lions at home, but foxes in the field,"

was less applicable, Sulla, on the other hand, did not allow his
poverty when young or his years when old to hinder him in the pursuit
of pleasure, but he enacted laws to regulate the marriages and morals
of his countrymen, and indulged his own amorous propensities in spite
of them, as we read in Sallust's history. In consequence of his vices,
Rome was so drained of money that he was driven to the expedient of
allowing the allied cities to purchase their independence by payment,
and that, too, although he was daily proscribing the richest men and
selling their property by public auction. Yet he wasted money without
limit upon his courtiers. What bounds can we imagine he would set to
his generosity when in his cups, seeing that once, when a great estate
was being sold by public auction, he ordered the auctioneer to knock
it down to a friend of his own for a mere nominal sum, and when some
one else made a higher bid, and the auctioneer called out the
additional sum offered, Sulla flew into a passion and exclaimed: "My
friends, I am very hardly used if I may not dispose of my own plunder
as I please." Now Lysander sent home to his countrymen even what he
had himself received