[Footnote 155:  Megara was always treated by the Greeks with the utmost contempt, as possessing no importance, political or otherwise.]

[Footnote 156:  Agesilaus offered sacrifice at Aulis, in imitation of Agamemnon, before starting for Asia.  But before he had completed the rite, the Boeotarchs sent a party of horse to enjoin him to desist, and the men did not merely deliver the message, but scattered the parts of the victim which they found on the altar.—­Thirlwall’s History of Greece, ch. xxxv.]

[Footnote 157:  The name of this fountain should probably be corrected from Strabo and Pausanias, and read Tilphusa, or Tilphosa,—­Langhorne.]

[Footnote 158:  Strabo tells us, Haliartus was destroyed by the Romans in the war with Perseus.  He also mentions a lake near it, which produces canes or reeds, not for shafts of javelins, but for pipes or flutes.  Compare Plutarch’s Life of Sulla, ch. xx. ad fin.]

[Footnote 159:  The Greeks attached great importance to the burial of the dead, and after a battle, that party which demanded a truce for collecting and burying its dead was thought to have admitted itself to have been defeated.  Naturally, therefore, the proposal was regarded as humiliating by the Spartans of 395 B.C.]

[Footnote 160:  It should be remembered that Chaeronea was Plutarch’s own city, and that he was a priest at Delphi, and, consequently, was especially familiar with the country here described.]

[Footnote 161:  Hoplites, in Greek, usually means a warrior fully armed.]

LIFE OF SULLA.

I. Lucius Cornelius Sulla,[162] by birth, belonged to the Patricians, whom we may consider as corresponding to the Eupatridae.  Among his ancestors is enumerated Rufinus,[163] who became consul; but is less noted for attaining this honour than for the infamy which befell him.  He was detected in possessing above ten pounds’ weight of silver plate, which amount the law did not permit, and he was ejected from the Senate.  His immediate descendants continued in a mean condition, and Sulla himself was brought up with no great paternal property.  When he was a young man he lived in lodgings, for which he paid some moderate sum, which he was afterwards reproached with, when he was prospering beyond his deserts, as some thought.  It was after the Libyan expedition, when he was assuming airs of importance and a haughty tone, that a man of high rank and character said to him, How can you be an honest man who are now so rich, and yet your father left you nothing?  For though the Romans no longer remained true to their former integrity and purity of morals, but had declined from the old standard, and let in luxury and expense among them, they still considered it equally a matter of reproach for a man to have wasted the property that he once had, and not to remain as poor as his ancestors.  Subsequently when Sulla was in the possession of power