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Updated: June 8, 2025
Scipio, the father-in-law of Pompey, in dying, well removed the ill opinion that till then every one had conceived of him. Epaminondas being asked which of the three he had in greatest esteem, Chabrias, Iphicrates, or himself.
But in my judgment, it was more difficult to advance his standard even to the walls of Sparta, and to be the first of mortals that ever passed the river Eurotas in arms, than it was to reduce Sicily; unless, indeed, we say that that adventure is with more of right to be attributed to Epaminondas, as was also the Leuctrian battle; whereas Marcellus's renown, and the glory of his brave actions came entire and undiminished to him alone.
I speak from experience, and well know how much the accounts I had read of Aristides, Epaminondas, Regulus, Cato, and innumerable other great characters among the ancients inflamed my imagination, and gave me a rooted love of virtue; so that even the vulgarly supposed dry precepts of Seneca and Epictetus were perused by me with delight; and with an emulous determination to put them in practice.
If he enter into a flattering presumption of his personal valour, let him but recollect the lives of Scipio, Epaminondas; so many armies, so many nations, that leave him so far behind them. No particular quality can make any man proud, that will at the same time put the many other weak and imperfect ones he has in the other scale, and the nothingness of human condition to make up the weight.
We can now have the requisite sympathy with those late doctors of the body politic, who came to the consultation pledged not to attempt to remove the thorn from its flesh, and trained to regard it as the spear-head in the side of Epaminondas, extract it, and the patient dies. In the writhings of the sufferer the barb has fallen out, and lo! he lives and is getting well.
"Bussy d'Amboise! the hero Bussy!" cried the young doctor, joyfully. "What, monsieur, you are that famous Bussy ?" "I am Bussy," replied he. "And now, wet and dirty as you are, will you satisfy my curiosity?" "The fact is," said the young man, "that I shall be obliged, like Epaminondas the Theban, to stay two days at home, for I have but one doublet and trousers.
For he did not now fight with that caution and cunning which he formerly made use of, but put all upon a desperate push; which, though not his usual method, succeeded so well, that he rescued the city out of the very hands of Epaminondas, and forced him to retire, and, at the erection of a trophy, was able, in the presence of their wives and children, to declare that the Lacedaemonians had nobly paid their debt to their country, and particularly his son Archidamus, who had that day made himself illustrious, both by his courage and agility of body, rapidly passing about by the short lanes to every endangered point, and everywhere maintaining the town against the enemy with but few to help him.
Convinced that the oracle was subsidized by Philip of Macedon, and instructed to speak in his favor, he boldly declared that the Pythia philippized, and bade the Athenians and Thebans remember that "Pericles and Epaminondas, instead of listening to the frivolous answers of the oracle, the resort of the ignorant and cowardly, consulted only reason in the choice of their measures."
How inexpressibly bolder and more pure were the doctrines of those great men, in comparison with the timid maxims which prevail in the writings of the most esteemed modern moralists! They were such as Phocion, and Epaminondas, and Timoleon, who formed themselves on their influence, were to the wretched heroes of our own age.
If the Romans did possess any taste for the fine arts, they left the exercise of it to the conquered to Greece, who had no longer her Solon, Lycurgus, Themistocles, and Epaminondas, but was unarmed, depressed, and had become the slave of Rome. 'Græcia capta ferum victorem cepit. How poor are such triumphs to those gained by the fine arts!
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