Hiero the Tyrant and Other Treatises (Penguin Classics) (8 page)
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Authors: Xenophon
[1] ‘Another point to note, Hiero, is that you shouldn’t hesitate to draw on your own personal funds to pay for projects that enhance the common good. It seems to me that money spent by a tyrant on public projects comes closer to being essential expenditure than money he spends on himself. But let’s consider all the relevant points one by one.
[2] ‘In the first place, then, which do you think brings you more credit,
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a residence gorgeously furnished at extraordinary expense, or the whole city equipped with defensive walls, temples, colonnades,
squares and harbours? Are you more likely to strike fear into the [3] enemy if you personally are decked out with astounding arms and armour, or if the whole city is properly armed? Do you think more [4] income would be generated if you were to keep only your own estates farmed or if you were to ensure that all the estates owned by your subjects were farmed? As for the occupation which is generally [5] regarded as the noblest and grandest there is – that is, the breeding of horses for chariot-racing – which approach do you think will bring you the most credit, if you personally were to breed more teams than anyone else in Greece and enter them at the great festivals, or if your community were to produce more breeders and provide more contestants than any other state in Greece? And would you prefer any victory you won to be due to the excellence of your team or to the flourishing of the community over which you preside?
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‘In my opinion, you see, it’s actually misguided for a tyrant to [6] compete against ordinary people. Rather than admiration, a victory would stir up malicious talk about all the estates which contributed towards his expenses, while a defeat would make him completely ridiculous. No, I tell you, Hiero, your competition is against other [7] heads of state, and if you make the state you rule flourish more than any others,
then
you will be
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the victor in the noblest and grandest contest in the world.
‘The first and immediate result will be the attainment of your goal: [8] you will be liked by your subjects. Secondly, your victory will not be proclaimed just by a single crier: the whole world will resound with praise of your excellence. State after state, not just ordinary [9] citizens, will look up to you with warmth and admiration, and throughout the world you will receive public tributes,
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rather than mere private acclaim.
‘Moreover, on the issue of safety, you’ll be able to travel wherever [10] you like to see the sights, or to stay where you are and do so. A constant procession of people will pass before your eyes, all with something clever or beautiful or good to show you, all desiring to serve you. Everyone around you will wish you well, and everyone [11] away from you will long to see you.
‘What people will feel for you, then, is passionate love rather than
mere liking. You won’t have to make advances to good-looking men, but to bear with their advances.
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You won’t be afraid, but you will [12] make others afraid, for your well-being. Your subjects’ state will be one of voluntary acquiescence, and their willing consideration for you will be obvious. In times of danger you’ll find them not just fighting by your side, but shielding you – even eagerly shielding you – with their bodies. They will want to shower you with gifts, and you’ll never be at a loss for a person of goodwill with whom to share them. You’ll find them rejoicing with you at your successes and [13] fighting for your interests as though they were their own. You’ll be able to treat your friends’ entire assets as your funds.
‘So you can enrich your friends, Hiero, without worrying, because you’ll be enriching yourself; you can enhance the power of your community, because you’ll be conferring power on yourself; you can win allies for the state, <because you’ll be gaining them for yourself.>
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[14] The whole country you can consider your estate, the citizens your comrades; you can regard your friends as your own children, and your sons as indistinguishable from your life.
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Try to outdo all these people [15] in benevolence, because if you beat your friends in benevolence, your enemies will never be able to stand up to you. If you do all this, there is no doubt that you will be endowed with the most wonderful and blessed possession in the world – you will be prosperous and happy and yet not be envied for it.’
INTRODUCTION
Agesilaus II, king (or strictly joint king) of Sparta, was one of the most interesting and important figures of his day (
c
. 445–360), a highly suitable case for biographical treatment. For the Greeks of the fourth century, biography was a novel art-form, being pioneered jointly by Xenophon and by Plato’s great rival as pedagogue, the Athenian rhetoric teacher Isocrates (436–338), who wrote encomiastic biography of two rulers, really tyrants, of Greek Cyprus, Euagoras (awarded Athenian citizenship) and his son Nicocles of Salamis. But Xenophon was not interested in life-writing simply for its own sake. He owed Agesilaus an encomium of some sort, for great personal services rendered (see main Introduction), and he felt duty-bound to defend his deceased patron’s good name against the large numbers of articulate enemies that the king’s uncompromising policies had generated. He wished, above all, to treat Agesilaus as a paradigm case, an exemplum of a moral-political thesis about leadership and the other components of what he calls compendiously ‘manly virtue’ (
andragathia
, 10.2).
The main point of
Agesilaus
is thus to exhibit the talents that had enabled Agesilaus to be both a perfectly good man, morally speaking, and – therefore – a great leader and ruler. Since Xenophon also ‘covered’ the career of Agesilaus in some considerable detail in his general history of Greece, sometimes in almost the same words, it is possible for us – as for his original readers – to compare and contrast the content, arrangement and emphases of the two works. Hardly surprisingly, the
Agesilaus
version emerges as consistently the more positive – the work is, after all, explicitly an encomium, not an objective description and explanation of a man’s career (in so far as
that would have been within the scope of Xenophon’s intellectual capacity or philosophical ambitions). One example will speak for many.
Referring to Agesilaus’ campaign against the Peloponnesian city of Phleious, a recalcitrant ally of Sparta, Xenophon writes here that, although it ‘may perhaps be criticized on other grounds’, there can be no doubting that it was ‘prompted by loyalty to his comrades’ (2.21), which was a virtuous and entirely admirable motivation. What those ‘other grounds’ actually were, so delicately alluded to here, are made explicit in
A History of My Times
. Phleious put up an extremely resolute and politically astute resistance to Agesilaus – it took him almost two years to complete the siege successfully, and the Phleiasian democratic leadership rightly thought it worth appealing against Agesilaus to his co-king. For, quite exceptionally, Agesilaus’s action engendered significant and vocal opposition even among his own habitually loyal people: ‘There were a number of Spartans who complained that for the sake of a few individuals they were making themselves hated by a city of more than 5,000 men’ (5.3.16; cf. Cartledge,
Agesilaos
, p. 265). Scholars today differ strongly over the political wisdom of Agesilaus’ hardline, pro-oligarchic policy towards Sparta’s disaffected Peloponnesian League allies, but supposing we had only the
Agesilaus
version, we could not even begin to argue the issue rationally.
That political calculus, however, is beside Xenophon’s point in the biography. Once the outline sketch of Agesilaus’ deeds has been got out of the way at breakneck speed in his first two chapters, Xenophon can lovingly enumerate and illustrate his hero’s principal virtues, above all – and in this significant order – piety, justice, self-control, courage and wisdom. At the end of the
Memoirs of Socrates
, in respect of Socrates, and again towards the end of the
Cyropaedia
(8.1.23–33), we find the same first three of these virtues singled out, and in the same order. But
eusebeia
or duly reverential attitude and practice in relation to what Xenophon calls variously
ho theos
(‘the god’),
hoi theoi
(‘the gods’),
to theion/ta theia
(‘the divine matter(s)’) or
to daimonion
(‘the supernatural’) – that for him was always the cardinal virtue, the primary point of reference on his moral map.
I am well aware of the difficulty of writing a tribute to Agesilaus that [1] does justice to his virtue and reputation, but all the same the attempt has to be made. It would be wrong for a man’s perfect goodness to condemn him to receiving no acclaim, however inadequate!
First, then, on the nobility of his lineage, could one find more [2] telling or excellent evidence than the fact that even today people count the generations of illustrious ancestors – no ordinary citizens, but kings and the sons of kings – who constitute his descent from Heracles?
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Nor could one find fault with them by claiming that, [3] although they were kings, the state they ruled over was an insignificant one. No, the supreme regard in which their line is held in their fatherland is matched by the pre-eminent position their state occupies in Greece, and so they were not the first citizens of a second-rate country, but leaders among leaders. Both the country and lineage of [4] Agesilaus also merit joint acclaim because the community never let envy of his ancestors lead them to attempt to put an end to their rule and the kings never lusted after more power than they originally received at their accession. That is why, as is apparent, no other government – whether it was a democracy, an oligarchy, a tyranny or a kingship – has enjoyed unbroken continuity, while this one alone, his ancestral kingship, has had a continuous existence.
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Moreover, it is clear that Agesilaus was considered worthy of the [5] throne even before his reign began, because after the death of King Agis, when the throne was disputed between Leotychidas (on the grounds that he was the son of Agis) and Agesilaus (on the grounds that he was the son of Archidamus), the state judged Agesilaus to be the more suitable candidate, thanks to his lineage and his virtue, and
they accordingly chose him as their king.
3
And what further evidence is needed of his virtue as far as the period before he ascended to the throne is concerned, than the fact that he was judged worthy of the highest office
4
in the most powerful state by the best of men?
[6] I will next give an account of all the things he achieved during his reign, because in my opinion there is no better way to gain insight into his character than by considering his deeds.
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Agesilaus was no longer
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a young man at the time of his accession to the throne. His reign was not far advanced when the news arrived that the Persian king was mustering a huge fleet and land army to [7] attack Greece. In the course of the ensuing debate, as the Spartans and their allies tried to decide what to do, Agesilaus said that if they gave him thirty Spartiates, 2,000 ex-Helots
6
and a contingent of 6,000 allied troops, he would cross over to Asia and try to negotiate a peace – or, if the Persian’s mind was set on war, he guaranteed to keep him [8] too busy to attack the Greeks.
7
This immediately earned him a great deal of admiration from all quarters. In the first place, there was his desire to pay the Persian back for his earlier invasion of Greece by crossing over to Asia;
8
then there were his preference for taking the war to the enemy rather than waiting for him to attack and his intention that the cost of the war should fall on the Persians, not the Greeks;
9
but the best aspect of his plan, to people’s minds,
10
was the possibility of making Asia rather than Greece the prize of the war.
[9] No clearer demonstration could be given of the kind of commander he proved to be, once he had been assigned the army and had sailed [10] off to Asia, than a narrative of his achievements.
11
His first action on arriving in Asia was as follows. Tissaphernes swore an oath to Agesilaus to the effect that, if Agesilaus would honour a truce until the return of the couriers whom he, Tissaphernes, had dispatched to the Persian king, he would see that the Greek cities in Asia regained their independence and were handed over to him.
12
Agesilaus, in his turn, swore to keep the truce without treachery and set a term of three months for the completion of Tissaphernes’ side of the bargain.
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[11] Tissaphernes, however, immediately broke his oath; instead of arranging for an end to hostilities, he asked the Persian king to send him a sizeable army, over and above the one he already had. Although
Agesilaus found out what was going on, he continued to abide by the truce. This, then, seems to me to constitute his first fine achievement: [12] he exposed Tissaphernes as a perjurer, so making him universally distrusted, and revealed himself by contrast to be the kind of man who not only approves and sanctions oaths, but also honours his agreements, thereby making everyone, both Greeks and non-Greeks, enter confidently into agreements with him whenever he wanted.
With the arrival of the fresh army, Tissaphernes arrogantly threatened [13] Agesilaus with war, unless he left Asia. All Agesilaus’ staff, including the Spartans who were there, openly expressed the dismay they felt at the thought that the forces available to Agesilaus were weaker than the Persian king’s resources – but Agesilaus looked positively radiant as he told the delegation to convey his profound thanks to Tissaphernes for having failed to keep his word, because the upshot was that he had earned the gods’ hostility and made them allies of the Greeks. Next, Agesilaus lost no time in ordering his troops [14] to pack up their gear in preparation for going to war, and in warning the communities on his route to Caria to have supplies ready for him. He also told the Ionian, Aeolian and Hellespontine Greeks by dispatch to send reinforcements to him at Ephesus.
Tissaphernes’ strategy was based on considering that Agesilaus had [15] no cavalry and that the terrain of Caria was not suitable for cavalry manoeuvres, and on the supposition that Agesilaus was angry with him personally for his deception. Having come to the conclusion that Agesilaus’ real target in Caria was his domain, he sent the whole of his infantry over there, while bringing his cavalry round to the plain of the River Meander. He thought that he had the capacity to crush the Greeks with his mounted troops before they reached bad cavalry country. Agesilaus, however, immediately went in the opposite direction [16] and marched on Phrygia instead of Caria. He proceeded to conscript into his army any forces he encountered during his march and to reduce the cities, and his surprise attacks gained him huge quantities of booty.
Further evidence of Agesilaus’ accomplishment as a military commander [17] was found in the fact that, once war had been declared and deception therefore became just and fair, he showed Tissaphernes to
be a mere child at deception. His friends also apparently benefited [18] financially from his sound advice at this point. He had captured so much property that goods were selling for next to nothing, so he told his friends to buy things up, explaining that he would soon be taking his army down to the coast. He told the quartermasters responsible for selling the booty to give the goods away, while keeping a record of their current market value; this enabled all his friends to gain huge quantities of valuable property without putting any money down in [19] advance and without causing any loss to the army funds. Moreover, whenever deserters came
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to the king, as one might expect they would, and offered to show him where there was some property to be taken, he made sure that it was his friends who were responsible for taking possession of these goods too, so that at one and the same time they could increase both their profits and their reputations. The immediate result of this was that his friendship was ardently wooed by large numbers of people.
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[20] Agesilaus appreciated that a devastated and depopulated land would be unable to support an army for long, whereas an inhabited and cultivated land would be a permanent source of nourishment, so he took care to win some of his enemies over with leniency, as well as [21] defeating others by force of arms. It was a frequent injunction of his to his men not to treat prisoners-of-war as criminals to be punished,
15
but as human beings to be guarded; and if he ever noticed, when shifting camps, that any small children had been abandoned by the dealers (who would commonly try to sell the children because they doubted that they would be able to support them and feed them), he [22] took care that they were rounded up and taken off somewhere.
16
He also gave orders that any prisoners who were abandoned because of their old age were to be provided for, to prevent their being killed by dogs or wolves. Consequently, he came to be regarded with goodwill not just by those who heard about this behaviour of his, but even by his prisoners-of-war. Whenever he brought a community over to his side, he refused to let the inhabitants serve him as slaves serve their masters and required from them only the obedience due to a ruler from free subjects; and his kindness gained him control even of strongholds which were impervious to brute force.
Now, since Pharnabazus and his cavalry were making it impossible [23] for him to fight on the plains, even in Phrygia,
17
he decided that he had to equip himself with a troop of cavalry or else be condemned to wage a fugitive’s war. He therefore drew up a list of the richest men from all the communities there who could maintain a horse, and [24] announced that if any of them supplied a horse, arms and armour, and a reliable man, he would be exempt from military service. In this way he gained their commitment to the project – the kind of wholehearted commitment that comes with looking for someone to die in one’s place!
18
He also charged certain communities with providing cavalry units, the idea being that horse-breeding communities would in all probability find it simple to come up with self-assured horsemen. This too was considered a
tour de force
, in the sense that no sooner had he gained a troop of cavalry than it was a potent and effective unit.
19
Early the following spring,
20
he assembled his entire army at Ephesus. [25] In order to motivate their training, he offered the cavalry contingents a prize for expertise on horseback and the heavy infantry contingents a prize for physical fitness. He also offered the light infantry units
21
and the bowmen prizes for displaying excellence at their particular jobs. And so you could have seen the gymnasia crammed with men at their exercises, the horse-track filled with cavalrymen on horseback, and the javelineers and bowmen shooting at the target pillar.
22
In fact, [26] he made the whole city where he was a remarkable sight. The city square was so filled with all kinds of armour and horses for sale, and every single bronze-smith, carpenter, ironsmith, leather-worker and engraver was so busy working on weapons of war, that you would literally have thought the city a workshop of war.
23
And the sight of [27] Agesilaus at the head of his men as they came garlanded from the gymnasia and dedicated their chaplets to Artemis
24
would have put heart into anyone, since every aspect of a situation where men are showing reverence to the gods, practising the arts of war and cultivating obedience to authority is naturally bound to raise good hopes.
25
Another thing he did was tell the auctioneers to offer any barbarians [28] captured by his raiders for sale naked, the idea being that contempt for the enemy fuels strength for battle. So the sight of their pale,
overweight and unfit bodies (because barbarians never used to strip and always relied on some kind of transport) made his men think that the forthcoming war would be just like having to fight women.
He also told his men that he would very soon be taking them by the shortest route to the best parts of the region, where he could have them directly prepare their bodies and minds for the coming conflict. [29] Now, Tissaphernes judged this announcement to be another deliberate decoy, and thought that this time Agesilaus really was going to invade Caria. So he sent his infantry over there, just as he had before, and stationed his cavalry on the plain of the Meander. Agesilaus meant no deceit, however; he kept to the terms of his announcement and went straight to the district of Sardis. For three days he made his way through territory devoid of enemy troops, which enabled his men to stock up with plenty of supplies.
[30] On the fourth day, however, the enemy cavalry arrived. While the officer in charge of the baggage train crossed the River Pactolus and made camp, as instructed by his commander, the actual cavalry caught sight of the Greek camp-followers, who were spread out in search of plunder, and killed a fair number of them. Once Agesilaus realized what was happening, he ordered his horsemen to mount a rescue operation. When the Persians saw these reinforcements coming, they regrouped and took up a position confronting the Greeks. All their [31] cavalry units – huge numbers of men – were involved in this. This was the point at which Agesilaus realized that he was at full strength, while the enemy was still without their infantry; it seemed the right time to join battle, if possible.
26
As soon as he had offered up a sacrifice,
27
he led his men in battle array against the cavalry formation. The heavy-armed troops from the ten youngest year-groups had orders to rush in and close with the enemy, while the light infantry were to lead the charge. He also ordered his cavalrymen to attack with the knowledge that he was backing them up with all the rest of [32] the army. It was the crack Persian troops who received the Greek cavalry attack, but they fell back in the face of the all-out shock of the assault. Some of them were cut down there and then in the river, while the rest fled. The Greeks set out in pursuit and captured the Persian camp as well. The light infantry began to turn to pillage, as
one might have expected, but Agesilaus had his men form a circular camp, enclosing both their own and the enemy’s property.
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