Comparison of Agesilaus and Pompey

Furthermore, the chief task of a good general is to force his enemies to give battle when he is superior to them, but not to be forced himself to do this when his forces are inferior, and by so doing Agesilaüs always kept himself unconquered; whereas in Pompey’s case, Caesar escaped injury at his hands when he was inferior to him, and forced him to stake the whole issue on a battle with his land forces, wherein Caesar was superior, thus defeating him and becoming at once master of treasures, pro- visions, and the sea,—advantages which would have brought his ruin without a battle had they remained in his enemy’s control.

And that which is urged as an excuse for this failure is really a very severe accusation against a general like him. For that a youthful commander should be frightened by tumults and outcries into cowardly weakness and abandon his safest plans, is natural and pardonable; but that Pompey the Great, whose camp the Romans called their country, and his tent their senate, while they gave the name of traitors and rebels to the consuls and praetors and other magistrates at Rome,—that he who was known to be under no one’s command,

but to have served all his campaigns most successfully as imperator, should be almost forced by the scoffs of Favonius and Domitius, and by the fear of being called Agamemnon, to put to the hazard the supremacy and freedom of Rome, who could tolerate this? If he had regard only for the immediate infamy involved, then he ought to have made a stand at the first and to have fought to its finish the fight for Rome, instead of calling the flight which he then made a Themistoclean stratagem and afterwards counting it a disgraceful thing to delay before fighting in Thessaly.

For surely Heaven had not appointed that Pharsalian plain to be the stadium and theatre of their struggle for the supremacy, nor was he summoned by voice of herald to go down thither and do battle or leave to another the victor’s wreath; nay, there were many plains, ten thousand cities, and a whole earth which his great resources by sea afforded him had he wished to imitate Maximus, or Marius, or Lucullus, or Agesilaüs himself,

who withstood no less tumults in Sparta when its citizens wished to fight with the Thebans in defence of their land, and in Egypt endured many calumnies and accusations and suspicions on the part of the king when he urged him to keep quiet; but he followed his own best counsels as he wished,

and not only saved the Egyptians against their wills, and by his sole efforts ever kept Sparta upright in the midst of so great a convulsion, but actually set up a trophy in the city for a victory over the Thebans, which victory he put his countrymen in the way of winning later, by keeping them then from the destruction into which they would have forced their way. Wherefore Agesilaüs was afterwards commended by those whom he had forced to take the path of safety, while Pompey, whom others had led into error, found accusers in the very ones to whom he had yielded.

And yet some say that he was deceived by his father-in-law Scipio, who wished to appropriate to his own uses the greater part of the treasure which he had brought from Asia, and therefore hid it away, and then hastened on the battle, on the plea that there was no longer any money. But even if this were true, a general ought not to suffer himself to be so easily deceived, nor afterwards to put his greatest interests at hazard. In these matters, then, such is the way in which we regard each of the men.