Page:Plutarch's Lives (Clough, v.4, 1865).djvu/501

 CLEQMENES. 493 things. For with the strength of one city, not only to fight the power of the Macedonians and all the Pelopon- nesians, supported by all the royal treasures, not only to preserve Laconia from being spoiled, but to waste the enemy's country, and to take so many and such consider- able cities, was an argument of no common skill and genius for command. But he that first said that money was the sinews of affairs, seems especially in that saying to refer to war. Demades, when the Athenians had voted that their galleys should be launched and equipped for action, but could produce no money, told them, " The baker was wanted first, and the pilot after." And the old Archidamus, in the beginning of the Peloponnesian war, when the allies desired that the amount of their contributions should be determined, is reported to have answered, that war cannot be fed upon so much a day. For as wrestlers, who have thoroughly trained and disciplined their bodies, in time tire down and exhaust the most agile and most skilful combatant, so Antigonus, coming to the war with great resources to spend from, wore out Cleomenes, whose pov- erty made it difficult for him to provide the merest suffi- ciency of pay for the mercenaries, or of provisions for the citizens. For, in all other respects, time favored Cle- omenes; for Antigonus's affairs at home began to be dis- turbed. For the barbarians wasted and overran Macedo- nia whilst he was absent, and at that particular time a vast army of Illyrians had entered the country ; to be freed from whose devastations, the Macedonians sent for Antigonus, and the letters had almost been brought to him before the battle was fought ; upon the receipt of which he would at once have marched away home, and jeft the Acha)ans to look to themselves. But Fortune, that loves to determine the greatest affairs by a minute, in this conjuncture showed such an exact niceness of time,