XXIII.  The Romans, accustomed as they are to refer all great success to the intervention of Heaven, thought that the whole glory of this achievement was due to the general.  The first thing heard was the victorious soldiers declaring that Poplicola had delivered up the enemy to them blind and lame, and all but in chains, for them to slaughter at their ease.  The people were enriched by the plunder and the sale of the prisoners for slaves.  Poplicola enjoyed a triumph, and previously delivering over the administration of the city to the two succeeding consuls, died shortly afterwards, having attained to the highest pitch of glory that man can reach.  The people, as if they had done nothing during his life to honour him as he deserved, and were now for the first time to show their gratitude, decreed him a public funeral, and moreover that every person should contribute the coin called quadrans, to show him respect.  The women also made a common agreement to wear mourning for him for a whole year.  He was buried by a decree of the people within the city near the place called Velia, and all his family were given the privilege of burial there.  At the present day not one of the family is actually buried there, but the corpse is carried thither, and laid down, while some one places a lighted torch under it for a moment, after which it is carried away.  By this ceremony they claim the right, although they forego it, and bury the corpse outside the city.

COMPARISON OF SOLON AND POPLICOLA.

I. It is a point peculiar to this comparison, and which does not occur in any of the other Lives which I have written, that in turn one imitates and the other bears witness to his fellow’s deeds.  Observe, for instance, Solon’s definition of happiness before Croesus, how much better it suits Poplicola than Tellus.  He says that Tellus was fortunate because of his good luck, his virtue, and his noble children; but yet he makes no mention of him or of his children in his poetry, and he never was a man of any renown, or held any high office.

Now Poplicola’s virtues made him the most powerful and glorious of the Romans during his life, and six hundred years after his death the very noblest families of Rome, those named Publicola and Messala and Valerius, are proud to trace their descent from him, even at the present day.  Tellus, it is true, died like a brave man fighting in the ranks, but Poplicola slew his enemies, which is much better than being killed oneself, and made his country victorious by skill as a general and a statesman, and, after triumphing and enjoying honours of every kind, died the death which Solon thought so enviable.  Besides, Solon, in his answer to Mimnermus about the time of life, has written the verses: 

    “To me may favouring Heaven send,
    That all my friends may mourn my end,”

in which he bears witness to the good fortune of Poplicola; for he, when he died, was mourned not only by all his friends and relations but by the whole city, in which thousands wept for him, while all the women wore mourning for him as if he were a son or father of them all that they had lost.