west of Europe, and Crassus wished in his turn to march eastward as
far as the Indian Ocean, and to conquer all those regions of Asia
which Pompeius and Lucullus, two great men and actuated by a like
desire for conquest, had previously aspired to subdue. Yet they also
met with a like opposition. When Pompeius was given an unlimited
command in the East, the appointment was opposed by the Senate, and
when Cæsar routed thirty thousand Germans, Cato proposed that he
should be delivered up to the vanquished, and that thus the anger of
the gods should be turned away from the city upon the author of so
great a crime as he had committed by breaking his word. Yet the Romans
slighted Cato's proposals and held a solemn thanksgiving for fifteen
days to show their joy at the news. How many days then must we imagine
they would have spent in rejoicing if Crassus had sent despatches
announcing the capture of Babylon, and then had reduced Media, Persia,
Hyrkania, Susa, and Bactria to the condition of Roman provinces. "If a
man must do wrong," as Euripides says of those who cannot live in
peace, and be contented when they are well off, they should do it on a
grand scale like this, not capture contemptible places like Skandeia
or Mende, or chase the people of Ægina, like birds who have been
turned out of their nests. If we are to do an injustice, let us not do
it in a miserable pettifogging way, but imitate such great examples as
Crassus and Alexander the Great. Those who praise the one of these
great men, and blame the other, do so only because they are unable to
see any other distinction between them except that the one failed and
the other succeeded.

V. When acting as general, Nikias did many great exploits, for he was
many times victorious, all but took Syracuse, and ought not justly to
bear the blame of the whole Sicilian disaster, because of his disease,
and the ill will which some bore him at Athens. Crassus on the other