Page:History of Greece Vol X.djvu/376

 354 HISTORY OF GREECE. tary capacity was never prostituted to personal jnds : neither to avarice, nor ambition, nor overweening vanity. Poor at the begin- ning of his life, he left at the end of it not enough to pay his fune- ral expenses ; having despised the many opportunities for enrich- ment which his position afforded, as well as the richest offers from foreigners. 1 Of ambition he had so little, by natural temperament, that his friends accused him of torpor. But as soon as the perilous exposure of Thebes required it, he displayed as much energy in her defence as the most ambitious of her citizens, without any of that captious exigence, frequent in ambitious men, as to the amount of glorification or deference due to him from his countrymen. And his personal vanity was so faintly kindled, even after the prodigious success at Leuktra, that we find him serving in Thessaly as a pri- vate hoplite in the ranks, and in the city as an aedile or inferior street-magistrate, under the title of Telearchus. An illustrious specimen of that capacity and good-will, both to command and to be commanded, which Aristotle pronounces to form in their combina- tion the characteristic feature of the worthy citizen. 2 He once incurred the displeasure of his fellow-citizens, for his wise and moderate policy in Achaia, which they were ill-judged enough to reverse. We cannot doubt also that he was frequently attacked by political censors and enemies, the condition of eminence in every free state ; but neither of these causes ruffled the dignified calmness of his political course. As he never courted popularity by unworthy arts, so he bore unpopularity without murmurs, and without angry renunciation of patriotic duty. 3 than we usually find in him, Hapa fiev yap tuaaTu TUV iM-uv EV uv evpoi irpoTeprjfia Ttjf do^jjf, irapu 6e rovru KU.GO.Q TU.Q uperac ffipoia/tevaf. 1 Polybius, xxxii, 8, 6. Cornelius Nepos (Epaminondas, c. 4) gives one anecdote, among several which he affirms to have found on record, of large pecuniaiy presents tendered to, and repudiated by, Epaminondas ; an anec- dote recounted with so much precision of detail, that it appears to deserve credit, though we cannot assign the exact time when the alleged briber Diomedon of Kyzicus, came to Thebes. Plutarch (De Genio Socratis, p. 583 F.) relates an incident about Jason of Pherse tendering money in vain to Epaminondas, which cannot well have happened before the liberation of the Kadmeia (the period to which Plutarch's dialogue assigns it), but may have happened afterwards. Compare Plutarch, Apophthegm, Reg. p. 193 C. ; and Plutarch's Life of Kabius Maximus, c. 27. * Aristotel. Politic, iii, 2, 10 3 Plutarch, Compar. Alkibiad. and Coriolanus, c. 4. 'Ejrei :6 ye p.ri ?t