LIFE OF PELOPIDAS.


I. Cato the elder, speaking to some persons who were praising a man of
reckless daring and audacity in war, observed that there is a
difference between a man's setting a high value on courage, and
setting a low value on his own life--and rightly. For a daring soldier
in the army of Antigonus, but of broken and ill health, being asked by
the king the reason of his paleness, confessed that he was suffering
from some secret disorder. When then the king, anxious for him,
charged his physicians to use the greatest care in their treatment, if
a cure were possible, at length this brave fellow, being restored to
health, was no longer fond of peril and furious in battle, so that
Antigonus reproved him, and expressed surprise at the change. The man
made no secret of his reason, but answered: "My, king, you have made
me less warlike by freeing me from those miseries on account of which
I used to hold my life cheap." And the Sybarite seems to have spoken
to the same effect about the Spartans, when he said that "they do no
great thing by dying in the wars in order to escape from such labours
and such a mode of life as theirs." However, no wonder if the
Sybarites, effete with luxurious debauchery, thought men mad who
despised death for love of honour and noble emulation; whereas the
Lacedæmonians were enabled by their valour both to live and to die
with pleasure, as the elegy shows, which runs thus:

"'Twas not that life or death itself was good,
That these heroic spirits shed their blood:
This was their aim, and this their latest cry,
'Let us preserve our honour, live or die.'"