as presents together with the rest of the spoils.
Yet I do not approve of him for so doing: for he did as much harm to
Sparta by bestowing that money upon it as Sulla did harm to Rome by
the money which he took from it: but I mention it as proving how
little he cared for money. Each acted strangely towards his
fellow-countrymen. Sulla regulated and improved the morals of Rome,
although he himself was wasteful and licentious. Lysander filled his
countrymen with the passions from which he himself was free. Thus the
former was worse than the laws which he himself enacted, while the
latter rendered his countrymen worse than himself, as he taught the
Spartans to covet what he had learned to despise. So much for their
political conduct.

IV. In warlike exploits, in brilliancy of generalship, in the number
of victories he won, and the greatness of the dangers which he
encountered, Sulla is immeasurably the greater. Lysander did indeed
twice conquer in a sea-fight, and I will even allow him the credit of
having taken Athens; no difficult matter, no doubt, but one which,
brought him great glory because of its being so famous a city. In
Boeotia and before Haliartus he was perhaps unlucky, yet his conduct in
not waiting for the arrival of the great force under Pausanias, which
was at Plataea, close by, seems like bad generalship. He would not stay
till the main body arrived, but rashly assaulted the city, and fell by
an unknown hand in an insignificant skirmish. He did not meet his
death facing overwhelming odds, like Kleombrotus at Leuktra, nor yet
in the act of rallying his broken forces, or of consummating his
victory, as did Cyrus and Epameinondas. All these died as became
generals and kings; but Lysander ingloriously flung away his life like
any common light infantry soldier, and proved the wisdom of the
ancient Spartans, who always avoided the attack of fortified places,
where the bravest may fall by the hand of the most worthless man, or
even by that of a woman or a child, as Achilles is said to have been
slain by Paris at the gates of Troy. Turning now to Sulla, it is not
easy to enumerate all the pitched battles he won, the thousands of
enemies that he overthrew. He twice took Rome itself by storm, and at
Athens he took Peiraeus, not by famine like Lysander, but after a
gigantic struggle, at the end of which he drove Archelaus into the
sea.

It is important also to consider who were the generals to whom they
were oppo