[76]
The same may be said of Pausanias and Lysander. 1
Although it is thought that it was by their achievements that Sparta gained her supremacy, yet these
are not even remotely to be compared with the
legislation and discipline of Lycurgus. Nay, rather,
it was due to these that Pausanias and Lysander had
armies so brave and so well disciplined. For my own
part, I do not consider that Marcus Scaurus was inferior to Gaius Marius, when I was a lad, or Quintus
Catulus to Gnaeus Pompey, when I was engaged in
public life. For arms are of little value in the field
unless there is wise counsel at home. So, too,
[p. 79]
Africanus, though a great man and a soldier of extraordinary ability, did no greater service to the state by
destroying Numantia than was done at the same time
by Publius Nasica, though not then clothed with
official authority, by removing Tiberius Gracchus.
This deed does not, to be sure, belong wholly to the
domain of civil affairs; it partakes of the nature of
war also, since it was effected by violence; but it was,
for all that, executed as a political measure without
the help of an army.
1 Pausanias and Lysander vs. Lycurgus.
M. Tullius Cicero. De Officiis. With An English Translation. Walter Miller. Cambridge. Harvard University Press; Cambridge, Mass., London, England. 1913.
The Annenberg CPB/Project provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.