Regum et imperatorum apophthegmata
Plutarch
Plutarch. Moralia, Vol. III. Babbitt, Frank Cole, translator. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1931 (printing).
Learning that his shield-bearer had received a great deal of money from a man who had been taken
captive in the war, he said to him, Give me back my shield, and buy yourself a tavern in which to spend the rest of your days; for you will no longer be willing to face danger as before, now that you have become one of the rich and prosperous. [*](Cf. Aelian, Varia Historia, xi. 9; Themistius, Oration, vii., 88 C.)Being asked whether he regarded himself or Chabrias or Iphicrates as the better general, he said, It is hard to decide while we are alive.
Upon his return from Laconia he was put on trial for his life, together with his fellow-generals, for having added, contrary to the law, four months to his term of office as Governor of Boeotia. [*](WHen the Thebans invaded the Peloponnesus, 370-369 B.C.) He bade his fellow-officers to put the responsibility on him, as if their action had been dictated by him, and said that he himself had not any words to speak better than his deeds; but if he absolutely must make a statement to the judges, he required from them as his just due, if they put him to death, to inscribe their sentence upon his tombstone, so that the Greeks might know that Epameinondas had compelled the Thebans against their will to lay waste Laconia with fire and sword, which for five hundred years [*](Plutarch in his Life of Agesilaus, chap. xxxi. (613 B), says not less than six hundred; one is probably as correct as the other.) had been unravaged; and that he had repopulated Messene after a space of two hundred and thirty years, and had organized the Arcadians and united them in a league, and had restored selfgovernment to the Greeks. As a matter of fact, all these things had been accomplished in that campaign.
Thereupon the judges left the court-room with hearty laughter, and did not even take up their ballots to cast against him. [*](There are many references to this story, and it was even used as a corpus vile for argumentation in the schools, to judge from Cicero, De inventione, i. 33 (55-56) and 38 (69). The story is repeated in Moralia, 540 D and 799 E; Aelian, Varia Historia, xiii. 42; Pausanias, ix. 14. 5-7; Cornelius Nepos, Epaminondas, xv. 7. 3-8, 5. Appian, Roman History, Syrian Wars, 40-41, compares the action of Epameinondas with the similar action of Scipio Africanus Major (Moralia, 196 F); and this suggests the probability that Appian had before him Plutarch’s Parallel Lives of Epameinondas and Scipio, now lost.)When in his last battle [*](At Mantineia, in 362 B.C.) he had been wounded and carried into a tent, he called for Daiphantus, and next after him for Iolai’das, and, learning that the men were dead, he bade the Thebans to make terms with the enemy, since no general was left to them. And the facts bore out his words, for he best knew his fellow-citizens. [*](Cf. Aelian, Varia Historia, xii. 3. Other authors lay stress on the fortitude with which he met his end. Cf. Diodorus, xv. 87; Cornelius Nepos, Epaminondas, xv. 9; Valerius Maximus, iii. 2, ext. 5; Justin, Historiae Philippicae, vi. 8.)