| In war, it is plain they were both
soldiers of excellent conduct, both at land and sea. But as in the games
they honour those champions who on the same day gain the garland, both
in wrestling and in the pancratium, with the name of ``Victors and more,''
so Cimon, honouring Greece with a sea and land victory on the same day,
may claim a certain pre-eminence among commanders. Lucullus received command
from his country, whereas Cimon brought it to his. He annexed the territories
of enemies to her, who ruled over confederates before, but Cimon made his
country, which when he began was a mere follower of others, both rule over
confederates, and conquer enemies too, forcing the Persians to relinquish
the sea, and inducing the Lacedaemonians to surrender their command. If
it be the chiefest thing in a general to obtain the obedience of his soldiers
by good-will, Lucullus was despised by his own army, but Cimon highly prized
even by others. His soldiers deserted the one, the confederates came over
to the other. Lucullus came home without the forces which he led out; Cimon,
sent out at first to serve as one confederate among others, returned home
with authority even over these also, having successfully effected for his
city three most difficult services, establishing peace with the enemy,
dominion over confederates, and concord with Lacedaemon. Both aiming to
destroy great kingdoms, and subdue all Asia, failed in their enterprise,
Cimon by a simple piece of ill-fortune, for he died when general, in the
height of success; but Lucullus no man can wholly acquit of being in fault
with his soldiers, whether it were he did not know, or would not comply
with, the distastes and complaints of his army, which brought him at last
into such extreme unpopularity among them. But did not Cimon also suffer
like him in this? For the citizens arraigned him, and did not leave off
till they had banished him, that, as Plato says, they might not hear him
for the space of ten years. For high and noble minds seldom please the
vulgar, or are acceptable to them; for the force they use to straighten
their distorted actions gives the same pain as surgeons' bandages do in
bringing dislocated bones to their natural position. Both of them, perhaps,
come off pretty much with an equal acquittal on this count.
Lucullus very much outwent him in
war, being the first Roman who carried an army over Taurus, passed the
Tigris, took and burned the royal palaces of Asia in the sight of the kings,
Tigranocerta, Cabira, Sinope, and Nisibis, seizing and overwhelming the
northern parts as far as the Phasis, the east as far as Media, and making
the South and Red Sea his own through the kings of the Arabians. He shattered
the power of the kings, and narrowly missed their persons, while like wild
beasts they fled away into deserts and thick and impassable woods. In demonstration
of this superiority, we see that the Persians, as if no great harm had
befallen them under Cimon, soon after appeared in arms against the Greeks,
and overcame and destroyed their numerous forces in Egypt. But after Lucullus,
Tigranes and Mithridates were able to do nothing; the latter, being disabled
and broken in the former wars, never dared to show his army to Pompey outside
the camp, but fled away to Bosporus, and there died. Tigranes threw himself,
naked and unarmed, down before Pompey, and taking his crown from his head
laid it at his feet, complimenting Pompey with what was not his own, but,
in real truth, the conquest already effected by Lucullus. And when he received
the ensigns of majesty again, he was well pleased, evidently because he
had forfeited them before. And the commander, as the wrestler, is to be
accounted to have done most who leaves an adversary almost conquered for
his successor. Cimon moreover, when he took the command, found the power
of the king broken, and the spirits of the Persians humbled by their great
defeats and incessant routs under Themistocles, Pausanias, and Leontychides,
and thus easily overcame the bodies of men whose souls were quelled and
defeated beforehand. But Tigranes had never yet in many combats been beaten,
and was flushed with success when he engaged with Lucullus. There is no
comparison between the numbers which came against Lucullus and those subdued
by Cimon. All which things being rightly considered, it is a hard matter
to give judgment. For supernatural favour also appears to have attended
both of them, directing the one what to do, the other what to avoid, and
thus they have, both of them, so to say, the vote of the gods, to declare
them noble and divine characters. |
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