in his own person the strength of all the rest, so that he by whose death so many perished, was indeed more than one.  A better answer was that of old Antigonus, who, as he was about to begin a sea-fight off Andros, some one having said that the enemy’s fleet was the more numerous, asked, “And for how many do you count me?”—­setting a high value, as is due, upon a skilful and brave leader, whose first duty is to keep safe him who preserves all the rest.

So Timotheus said well, when Chares was displaying to the Athenians the wounds on his body, and his shield pierced by a dart.  “Now I,” said he, “when I was besieging Samos, was quite ashamed if an arrow fell near me, thinking that I was exposing myself more boyishly than was fitting for the general and leader of so important a force.”  In cases where the personal risk of the general is of great moment to his army, then he must fight and expose himself without stint, and disregard those who say that a general should die of old age, or at any rate, when an old man.  But where the gain is small in case of success, while failure ruins everything, no one demands that the work of the common soldier be performed at the risk of the general’s life.

These prefatory remarks occurred to me in writing the Lives of Pelopidas and Marcellus, great men who fell in a manner scarce worthy of themselves:  for being both of them most stout in battle, and having each illustrated his country by splendid campaigns, against, too, the most terrible antagonists—­the one, as we read, having routed Hannibal, who before was invincible, and the other having in a pitched battle conquered the Lacedaemonians, the ruling state by sea and land—­yet they without any consideration endangered themselves and flung away their lives just at the time when there was special need for such men to live and command.  And on this account I have drawn a parallel between their lives, tracing out the points of resemblance between them.

III.  The family of Pelopidas, the son of Hippokles, was an honourable one at Thebes, as likewise was that of Epameinondas.  Bred in great affluence, and having early succeeded to a splendid inheritance, he showed eagerness to relieve the deserving poor, that he might prove that he had become the master, not the servant of his riches.  In most cases, Aristotle observes, men either do not use their wealth through narrow-mindedness, or else abuse it through extravagance, and the one class are always the slaves of their pleasures, the other of their gains.

Now, while all other persons gratefully made use of Pelopidas’s liberality and kindness, Epameinondas alone could not be induced to share his wealth; he thereupon shared the other’s poverty, priding himself on simplicity of dress and plainness of food, endurance of fatigue, and thoroughness in the performance of military service; like Kapaneus, in Euripides, who “had plenty of wealth, but was far from proud on account of his wealth,” for he felt