sed. It must have been mere child's-play to Lysander to
defeat Antiochus, the pilot of Alkibiades, and to outwit Philokles,
the Athenian mob-orator,

"A knave, whose tongue was sharper than his sword,"

for they were both of them men whom Mithridates would not have thought
a match for one of his grooms, or Marius for one of his lictors. Not
to mention the rest of the potentates, consuls, praetors and tribunes
with whom Sulla had to contend, what Roman was more to be dreaded than
Marius? What king more powerful than Mithridates? Who was there in
Italy more warlike than Lamponius and Pontius Telesinus? Yet Sulla
drove Marius into exile, crushed the power of Mithridates, and put
Lamponius and Pontius to death.

V. What, however, to my mind incontestably proves Sulla to have been
the greater man of the two, is that, whereas Lysander was always
loyally assisted by his countrymen in all his enterprises, Sulla,
during his campaign in Boeotia, was a mere exile. His enemies were
all-powerful at Rome. They had driven his wife to seek safety in
flight, had pulled down his house, and murdered his friends. Yet he
fought in his country's cause against overwhelming numbers, and gained
the victory. Afterwards, when Mithridates offered to join him and
furnish him with the means of overcoming his private enemies, he
showed no sign of weakness, and would not even speak to him or give
him his hand until he heard him solemnly renounce all claim to Asia
Minor, engage to deliver up his fleet, and to restore Bithynia and
Cappadocia to their native sovereigns. Never did Sulla act in a more
noble and high-minded manner. He preferred his country's good to his
own private advantage, and, like a well-bred hound, never relaxed his
hold till his enemy gave in, and then began to turn his attention to
redressing his own private wrongs.

Perhaps their treatment of Athens gives us some insight into their
respective characters. Although that city sided with Mithridates and
fought to maintain his empire, yet when Sulla had taken it he made it
free and independent. Lysander, on the other hand, felt no pity for
Athens when she fell from her glorious position as the leading state
in Greece, but put an end to her free constitution and established the
cruel and lawless government of the Thirty.

We may now conclude our review of their respective lives by observing
that while Sulla performed greater achievements, Lysander committed
fewer crimes: and t