The most glorious, however, of all glories, resulting from these exploits, was, as he himself says, in the speech which he made in public relative to his previous career, that Asia Minor, which he received as the boundary of the empire, he left as its centre. If any one should wish, on the other hand, in a similar manner, to pass in review the exploits of Cæsar, who has shown himself greater still than Pompey, why then, he must enumerate all the countries in the world, a task, I may say, without an end!
A minute inquiry by whom the greatest valor has ever been exhibited, would lead to an endless discussion, especially if all the fables of the poets are to be taken for granted. Lucius Siccius Dentatus, who was tribune of the people in the consulship of Spurius Tarpeius and Aulus Aterius (B.C. 454), not long after the expulsion of the kings, has very numerous testimonies in his favor. This hero fought one hundred and twenty battles, was eight times victorious in single combat, and was graced with forty-five wounds in the front of the body, without one on the back. The same man also carried off thirty-four spoils, was eighteen times presented with the victor’s spear,[75] and received twenty-five pendants, eighty-three torcs, or golden ornaments, one hundred and sixty bracelets, twenty-six crowns, a fisc or chest of money, ten prisoners, and twenty oxen. He followed in the triumphal processions of nine generals, who mainly owed their victories to his exertions; besides all which, a thing that I look upon as the most important of all his services, he denounced to the people Titus Romilius, one of the generals of the army, at the end of his consulship, and had him convicted of having made an improper use of his authority.
The military honors of Manlius Capitolinus would have been no less splendid than his, if they had not been all effaced at the close of his life. Before his seventeenth year, he had gained two spoils, and was the first of equestrian rank who received a mural crown; he also gained six civic crowns, thirty-seven donations, and had twenty-three scars on the fore-part of his body. He saved the life of P. Servilius, the master of the horse, receiving wounds on the same occasion in the shoulders and the thigh. Besides all this, unaided, he saved the Capitol, when it was attacked by the Gauls, and through that, the state itself; a thing that would have been the most glorious act of all, if he had not so saved it, in order that he might, as its king, become its master. But in all matters of this nature, although valor may effect much, fortune does still more.
No person living, in my opinion at least, ever excelled Marcus Sergius, although his great-grandson, Catiline, tarnished the honors of his name. In his second campaign he lost his right hand; and in two campaigns he was wounded three and twenty times—so severely that he could scarcely use either his hands or his feet; still, attended by a single slave, he afterwards served in many campaigns, though but an invalided soldier. He was twice taken prisoner by Hannibal, (for it was with no ordinary enemy that he would engage,) and twice did he escape from his captivity, after having been kept, without a single day’s intermission, in chains and fetters for twenty months. On four occasions he fought with his left hand alone, two horses being slain under him. He had a right hand made of iron, and attached to the stump, after which he fought a battle, and raised the siege of Cremona, defended Placentia, and took twelve of the enemy’s camps in Gaul. All this we learn from an oration of his, which he delivered when, in his prætorship, his colleagues attempted to exclude him from the sacred rites, on the ground of his infirmities.[76] What heaps upon heaps of crowns would he have piled up, if he had only had other enemies! For, in matters of this nature, it is of the first importance to consider in what times the valor of each man has fallen. What civic crowns did Trebia, what did the Ticinus, what did Lake Thrasymenus afford? What crown was there to be gained at Cannæ, where it was deemed the greatest effort of valor to have escaped from the enemy? Other persons have been conquerors of men, no doubt, but Sergius conquered even Fortune herself.
CHAPTER VI.
MEN OF REMARKABLE GENIUS AND WISDOM.
Among so many different pursuits, and so great a variety of works and objects, who can select the palm of glory for transcendent genius? Unless perchance we should agree in opinion that no more brilliant genius ever existed than the Greek poet Homer, whether we look at the happy subject of his work, or the excellence of its execution. For this reason it was that Alexander the Great, when he found among the spoils of Darius, the King of Persia, a casket for perfumes, enriched with gold, precious stones, and pearls, covered as he was with the dust of battle, deemed it beneath a warrior to make use of unguents, and, when his friends were pointing out to him its various uses, exclaimed, “Nay, but by Hercules! let the casket be used for preserving the poems of Homer;” that so the most precious work of the human mind might be placed in the keeping of the richest work of art. It was the same conqueror, too, who gave directions that the descendants and house of the poet Pindar should be spared, at the taking of Thebes. He likewise rebuilt Stagira, the native city of Aristotle, uniting to the extraordinary brilliancy of his exploits this speaking testimony of his kindliness of disposition.
Dionysius the tyrant, who otherwise manifested a natural propensity for cruelty and pride, sent a vessel crowned with garlands to meet Plato, that high-priest of wisdom; and on his disembarkation, received him on the shore, in a chariot drawn by four white horses. Isocrates was able to sell a single oration of his for twenty thousand dollars. When Æschines, the great Athenian orator, had read to the Rhodians the speech which he had made on the accusation of Demosthenes he then read the defence made by Demosthenes, through which he had been driven into exile among them. When they expressed their admiration of it, he exclaimed:—“How much more would you have admired it, if you had heard him deliver it himself;” a striking testimony, indeed, given in adversity, to the merit of an enemy!
The nobles of Rome have given their testimony in favor of foreigners, even. After Pompey had finished the war against Mithridates, he went to call at the house of Posidonius, the famous teacher of philosophy, but forbade the lictor to knock at the door, as was the usual custom; and he, to whom both the eastern and the western world had yielded submission, ordered the fasces to be lowered before the door of a learned man.
The elder Africanus ordered that the statue of Ennius should be placed in his tomb, and that the illustrious surname which he had acquired, I may say, as his share of the spoil on the conquest of the third part of the world, should be read over his ashes, along with the name of the poet. The Emperor Augustus, now deified, forbade the works of Virgil to be burnt, in opposition to the modest directions to that effect, which the poet had left in his will: a prohibition which was a greater compliment paid to his merit, than if he himself had recommended his works.
Marcus Varro is the only man, who, during his lifetime, saw his own statue erected. This was placed in the first public library that was ever built, and which was formed by Asinius Pollio with the spoils of our enemies. The fact of this distinction being conferred upon him by one who was in the first rank, both as an orator and a citizen, and at a time, too, when there was so great a number of men distinguished for their genius, was not less honorable to him, in my opinion, than the naval crown which Pompey bestowed upon him in the war against the pirates. The instances that follow among the Romans, if I were to attempt to reckon them, would be found to be innumerable; for it is the fact that this one nation has furnished a greater number of distinguished men in every branch than all the countries of the world taken together.[77]