These prefatory remarks occurred to me in writing the Lives of Pelopidas and Marcellus, great men who fell in a manner scarce worthy of themselves: for being both of them most stout in battle, and having each illustrated his country by splendid campaigns, against, too, the most terrible antagonists--the one, as we read, having routed Hannibal, who before was invincible, and the other having in a pitched battle conquered the Lacedæmonians, the ruling state by sea and land--yet they without any consideration endangered themselves and flung away their lives just at the time when there was special need for such men to live and command. And on this account I have drawn a parallel between their lives, tracing out the points of resemblance between them. III. The family of Pelopidas, the son of Hippokles, was an honourable one at Thebes, as likewise was that of Epameinondas. Bred in great affluence, and having early succeeded to a splendid inheritance, he showed eagerness to relieve the deserving poor, that he might prove that he had become the master, not the servant of his riches. In most cases, Aristotle observes, men either do not use their wealth through narrow-mindedness, or else abuse it through extravagance, and the one class are always the slaves of their pleasures, the other of their gains. Now, while all other persons gratefully made use of Pelopidas's liberality and kindness, Epameinondas alone could not be induced to share his wealth; he thereupon shared the other's poverty, priding himself on simplicity of dress and plainness of food, endurance of fatigue, and thoroughness in the performance of military service; like Kapaneus, in Euripides, who "had plenty of wealth, but was far from proud on account of his wealth," for he felt ashamed to be seen using more bodily luxuries than the poorest Theban citizen. Epameinondas, whose poverty was hereditary, made it lighter and more easily borne by the practice of philosophy, and by choosing from the beginning a single life; while Pelopidas made a brilliant marriage and had children born to him, yet, in spite of this, diminished his fortune by disregard of money-making and by giving up all his time to the service of his country. And when his friends blamed him, and said that he was treating lightly a necessary of life, the possession of money, "Necessary, indeed," he answered, "for Nikodemus here," pointing to a man who was a cripple and blind.