Comparison of Philopoemen and Titus

ACCORDINGLY, in the magnitude of their benefactions to the Greeks, neither Philopoemen nor any one of the Greeks who were better men than Philopoemen is worthy of comparison with Titus. For they were Greeks and waged their wars against Greeks; whereas Titus was not a Greek and waged war in behalf of Greeks; and at a time when Philopoemen was unable to defend his own countrymen from the attacks of their enemies, and had gone off into Crete, at that very time Titus won a victory over Philip in the heart of Greece and set her peoples and all her cities free.

And if we examine into the battles which each fought, we shall find that the Greeks slain by Philopoemen as general of the Achaeans were more in number than the Macedonians slain by Titus as helper of the Greeks. And then as to their errors, in the one they were due to ambition, in the other to a spirit of contention. For Titus preserved Philip’s royal dignity and showed favour to the Aetolians; whereas the anger of Philopoemen led him to rob his native city of its supremacy over the surrounding villages.

And further, the one was always constant towards his beneficiaries, while the other, to indulge his wrath, was ever ready to cancel a kindness. For instance, though he had once been a benefactor of Sparta, he afterwards tore down her walls, reduced her territory, and finally altered and destroyed her very constitution. And it would appear that he threw away his life in a fit of anger and contentiousness, by hastening to attack Messene before occasion offered and more quickly than was feasible; for he did not, like Titus, conduct all his military operations with deliberation and a due regard for safety.