by Plutarch
2 (29). Furthermore, at Marathon and later at Plataea,5 Aristeides was only one of ten generals,6 whereas Cato was elected one of two consuls against numerous competitors and later one of two censors ahead of seven distinguished and eminent rivals.7 Nor was Aristeides the foremost man in any of his victories: at Marathon it was Miltiades8 who won the prize of valour; at Salamis9 it was Themistocles; and at Plataea, according to Herodotus, it was Pausanias who ‘won the noblest of victories’.10 As for Aristeides, he must dispute even the second place with Sophanes, Ameinias, Callimachus and Cynaegeirus,11 men who distinguished themselves brilliantly in these battles. Yet Cato was foremost in combat and in counsel not only when he was consul during the war in Spain,12 but also at Thermopylae, when he was a tribune of the soldiers and another man was consul, for the glory of that victory was his, after he threw the doors wide open for the Romans to attack Antiochus by attacking the king from behind when he was looking only to the front.13 Clearly that victory was Cato’s achievement, and by driving Asia out of Greece he paved the way for Scipio.14
Both men, then, were invincible in war, but in politics Aristeides suffered a fall when he was checked and then ostracized by the faction of Themistocles,15 whereas Cato, whose adversaries included nearly all of Rome’s most eminent and influential men, continued, like a wrestler, to grapple with them even when he was very old, and he was never thrown by any of them. He was very often involved in court cases, both as a defendant and as a plaintiff. As plaintiff he frequently won a conviction, and as defendant he was always acquitted – thanks to his eloquence, his life’s shield and his most potent weapon. Indeed, it is to his abilities as a speaker, and not to fortune or any guardian spirit, that one must attribute the fact that he never suffered a disgrace in public life. One is reminded of Antipater’s high praise for the philosopher Aristotle when he wrote about him, after his death, that in addition to his many other fine qualities, the man possessed a talent for persuasion.16
3 (30). It is generally agreed that man’s highest virtue lies in his capacity to govern a state, and most believe that an important aspect of this is the management of a household.17 For in reality a city is the aggregate of its households, and the vigour of a state depends on the prosperity of its citizens in their private lives. For when Lycurgus banished silver and gold from Sparta, replacing it with a currency of iron spoiled by fire,18 he did not by doing so release his fellow-citizens from the responsibility of managing their domestic expenses. Instead, he got rid of the enervating, festering and feverish symptoms that riches can excite, making provision instead for every citizen to enjoy an abundance of the things in life that are necessary and useful. For, with greater foresight than any other legislator, he worried even more about how the state would be affected by citizens who were helpless, homeless and destitute than by those who were extremely rich.19
Now, it is clear that Cato was as capable in administering his personal affairs as he was the affairs of state, for not only did he increase his own property and wealth but also taught others about domestic economy and farming by compiling many useful precepts on these subjects. Aristeides, by contrast, through his own poverty brought discredit on his well-known justice, as if justice were to blame for ruining families and turning men into beggars, and was a source of profit to everyone but its possessor.20 Yet21 Hesiod, in numerous passages, exhorts us to combine justice with sound economic practices and abuses idleness as the origin of injustice.22 Homer, too, puts it well when he says:
… hard work was never my delight
Nor the sound management of a household, which breeds fine
children;
Instead I was pleased by ships well equipped with oars
And battles and well-polished javelins and arrows.23
Thus the poet gives us to understand that the men who neglect their households and the men who live by injustice are one and the same.24 So it is not the case, as physicians say of olive oil, how it is most beneficial when applied to the outside of the body but very harmful when taken internally, that the just man is inevitably helpful to others but neglectful of himself and his family.25 Which makes it a severe blemish on Aristeides’ political career if it is true, as most authorities say it is, that he made no provisions for leaving behind dowries for his daughters or funds to cover the costs of his own burial.26 Cato’s family furnished Rome with praetors and consuls down to the fourth generation,27 since his grandsons and even great-grandsons held the highest offices, whereas the descendants of Aristeides, though he was the foremost of the Greeks, were so degraded by their abject poverty that one of them made his living by interpreting dreams, while others were compelled by their penury to stretch out their hands in solicitation of public grants.28 None of them was in a condition even to contemplate any illustrious deed worthy of their great ancestor.
4 (31). But should we not first dispute this point? Poverty is never dishonourable in itself but only when it is a mark of indolence, intemperance, extravagance or foolishness.29 When it visits a man who is temperate, industrious, just and courageous, who devotes himself entirely to public service, then it is a sign of magnanimity and a great nature.30 For a man cannot perform great deeds when he is preoccupied by little worries, no can he aid the many who are in need when he is himself in need of many things. The most important resource for public service is not wealth but self-sufficiency, for, when a man does not require private luxury, there is nothing to distract him from his service to the state.31 God is entirely free from need, and among mortal virtues it is the one that does the most to reduce our needs that is the most perfect and god-like.32 For just as a body which is nobly conditioned and healthy requires nothing in the way of superfluous food or clothing, so a sound lifestyle and family life can be managed quite well without unnecessary expenses. One’s goods ought to match one’s needs. A man who amasses much but uses little of it is not a man who is self-sufficient. If he does not need it, he is foolish for acquiring what he does not want, and yet if he does want it, owing to his parsimony he makes himself miserable by denying himself the pleasure of using it.
I would very much like to put this question to Cato himself: If wealth is something that should be enjoyed, why, after amassing so much, do you boast of being satisfied with little? If in fact it is a mark of distinction, and indeed it is, for a man to eat whatever bread is to hand, or drink the same wine as labourers and slaves drink, or to have no need for purple robes or houses with plastered walls,33 then Aristeides and Epaminondas and Manius Curius and Gaius Fabricius were surely correct in spurning the acquisition of things the use of which they deprecated. For it was unnecessary for a man who claims that turnips are a fine dish and boils them himself,34 while his wife is busy baking bread,35 to prattle on about the value of a single as36 or to write a treatise on what practices allow one to become rich most quickly.37 A simple and self-sufficient life is a great one, because it delivers one from anxiety over superfluous matters. This is why, so we are told, Aristeides proclaimed, at the trial of Callias, that while it was fitting for men who could not avoid their poverty to be ashamed of it, men like himself, who choose their poverty, should glory in it.38 It would certainly be ridiculous to suppose that Aristeides’ poverty was due to indolence, since without doing anything disgraceful he could easily have enriched himself by despoiling a single barbarian or seizing a single tent.39 That, then, is enough on this matter.
5 (32). Let us turn now to their military commands. Cato’s successes added little to Rome’s empire, which was already vast, whereas Aristeides’ were some of the most noble, most glorious and most important achievements of the Greeks, namely Marathon, Salamis and Plataea. And Antiochus is hardly worthy of comparison with Xerxes,40 nor the destruction of city walls in Spain with the deaths of tens of thousands of barbarians on land and at sea. In each of these battles, Aristeides was second to none when it came to fighting, but the glory and the crowns of honour he left to those who desired them more than he did, just as was his habit when it came to
riches and silver, because in these matters as well he was superior to all. Now for my own part, I do not reproach Cato for his incessant boasting and for always claiming to be superior to everyone else.41 He, however, in one of his speeches, insists that glorifying oneself, like reviling oneself, is disgusting.42 In my opinion, the man who praises himself has made less progress towards virtue than the man who does not even need to be praised by others. For a modest indifference to glory contributes greatly towards the attainment of a mild disposition in political life, whereas ambition works in an opposite manner, exciting harshness and envy.43 Of ambition Aristeides was entirely free, but Cato was possessed by it. For Aristeides saved Athens through his cooperation with Themistocles in the midst of great affairs, standing guard over him, so to speak, when he was general.44 Cato, by contrast, through his opposition to Scipio, came close to undermining and ruining his command against the Carthaginians, when he vanquished the invincible Hannibal, and ultimately, by way of intrigue and calumny, drove him from Rome and secured his brother’s shameful condemnation on charges of embezzlement.45
6 (33). As for self-restraint,46 a virtue Cato always celebrated in the loveliest of panegyrics, Aristeides actually practised it with unsullied purity, while Cato, owing to a marriage that was dishonourable and out of season, was heavily censured in this regard. Indeed, it was certainly ignoble for a man of his age to introduce as stepmother to his adult son and his son’s wife a girl whose father was no more than a petty official who earned his salary from the state. Whether he did this out of a desire for carnal pleasure or anger, seeking to punish his son for objecting to his mistress, both his action and its pretext were disgraceful. In explaining himself to his son, it is plain that he resorted to irony, not the truth. For if he had wished to father other sons as virtuous as his first, then from the start he would have endeavoured to marry a noble woman instead of enjoying, so long as he could get away with it, sexual relations with a woman who was a common slave, unfit for marriage. And once he was found out, he chose as his father-in-law a man he could easily bend to his will, instead of one whose alliance would bring him the most honour.47
AEMILIUS PAULLUS
* * *
Introduction to Aemilius Paullus
History Man
Aemilius Paullus was destiny’s man. That, at least, was the view of Polybius. The distinctive feature of his Histories, Polybius claimed, was its explication of the workings of Fortune (Tyche) in shaping history (1.4.1):
For what gives my work its unique quality and what is the most amazing thing of our present time is this: Tyche has guided almost all the affairs of the world in one direction and has compelled them to incline towards one and the same end.
That end came at the battle of Pydna in 168 BC, when Aemilius Paullus defeated King Perseus, after which the kingdom of Macedon was done away with and ‘the Romans succeeded in subjecting nearly the whole of the inhabited world to their sole authority’ (1.1.5). This geopolitical transformation Polybius attributes to a world historical tyche (1.4.1), and it constitutes the central subject of his entire inquiry, which he concluded with the events of 167 BC, when, for better or worse, the Romans’ dominion began. It is true that Polybius later expanded his project to 145 BC – just to investigate whether it was better or worse. But the salient point is his assertion that Tyche’s grandest accomplishment culminated in the career of Aemilius Paullus.1
In the character of Aemilius Paullus, Polybius accumulates all the various concepts of tyche in his Histories. Macedon, Polybius accepts, rose to great power through the workings of chance, but fell in part owing to Nemesis (another manifestation of tyche) activated by the crimes of Philip V.2 The agent of Macedon’s punishment, and of Fortune’s design for Rome, was Aemilius. And yet, after his victory at Pydna, Fortune, jealous of the Roman’s success, deprived him of his sons, a catastrophe attributable to tyche that he meets with dignity and fortitude.3
The momentous presence of Aemilius Paullus in Polybius is perhaps unsurprising in view of the historian’s close connection with the man and his family.4 His almost paradigmatic role in Polybius’ Histories makes him the natural precursor of his brilliant son, and Polybius’ friend, Scipio Aemilianus, whose career dominates the final books of the work. Plutarch, however, betrays little interest in Polybius’ personal motives for his undoubtedly biased depiction of Aemilius. Instead, he takes Polybius at his word, concentrating instead on Aemilius’ crucial role in the rise of Rome over Greece, which he liberates, once and for all, from the menace of Macedon.
Aemilius Paullus
Plutarch’s Life is focused almost entirely on the campaign at Pydna and subsequent events (chs. 7–34), by which time Aemilius was around sixty years old, a former consul and triumphant general. He was born around 228 BC, a scion of an ancient patrician family eminent as early as the fifth century BC. His father had twice been consul, and there should have been no impediment to his son’s ultimate elevation to the same office. Of Aemilius’ early career we know very little save that he was dutiful in military matters, rising routinely through the magistracies (with a brilliant success in the aedilician elections for 193: ch. 3) to become praetor in 191. Assigned the province of Farther Spain, he campaigned successfully enough to be hailed Conquering General (imperator) by his troops, and the senate decreed a thanksgiving to the gods (supplicatio) in his honour. These were often the antecedents to a triumph, but not in Aemilius’ case.5 And Aemilius was strangely unsuccessful, for a man of his lineage and attainments, in reaching the consulship, suffering more than one defeat at the polls.6 In 182 BC he finally got in, and, at last, earned a triumph (ch. 6). His second consulship came fourteen years later in 168 BC. His province was the war against Perseus, and this is the best-known phase of his career.
The origins of the Third Macedonian War (171–168 BC) remain obscure due to the heavily apologetic strain of our literary sources, which insist, in different ways, that Rome went to war against Perseus only as a last and a defensive resort.7 Polybius explained the war by appealing to the disloyalty of Philip V, the effects of which persisted after his death. Philip, according to Polybius (22.18.10–11; a view accepted by Plutarch in ch. 8), intended to wage a second war against Rome and before his death had commenced massive preparations. In 179 BC Perseus inherited both Philip’s kingdom and his anti-Roman designs. But the belief that Philip or Perseus was scheming against Rome is probably nonsense. Although there is no doubt that Philip endeavoured to restore the military health of his kingdom, or that Perseus followed this same policy, there is no likelihood whatsoever that either intended to challenge Rome. This, however, did not prevent Perseus’ rivals in the east8 from pretending otherwise, and eventually the Roman senate began to see in Macedon a glittering source of plunder and glory, the seizing of which it justified through diplomatic chicanery. Perseus’ true posture is probably made clear by his conduct after his victory over Publius Licinius Crassus in 171 BC: he sued for peace on terms disadvantageous to himself (Polybius 27.8.1–10).
Many if not most in the Greek east sided in sentiment if not in action with Perseus, hopeful that Macedon, whose ultimate submission was inevitable, might at least sustain its unequal balance of power with Rome, thereby allowing Greece a degree of genuine freedom as it negotiated the political space separating the two powers, a reality that even the Elder Cato appreciated.9 The Romans’ striking incompetence in prosecuting this war, as well as Perseus’ resourcefulness (ch. 9), did little to dash these hopes. Hence the significance of Aemilius’ overwhelming victory in 168 BC, after which Aemilius and a senatorial commission presided over the dismantling of the kingdom of Macedon and subjected every Greek ally to a severe and distrustful scrutiny, involving arrests, deportations and mass executions. The harshest treatment was reserved for Epirus, where Aemilius sacked seventy cities and sold 150,000 people into slavery. Such were the lessons meted out by Rome on the foolishness of resisting its supreme power.10
After Aemilius returned to Rome, although his p
olitical enemies attempted to block his triumph, they were unsuccessful. The celebration, however, was marred by the untimely death of his young sons, a personal misfortune central to Plutarch’s Life (chs. 35–6). Aemilius was subsequently elected censor for 164 BC, after which he seems largely to have retired from public life, perhaps owing to illness. He died in 160 BC.