33.5
We men of Thessaly can never again escort a living Pelopidas on his way, nor pay him worthy honours of which he can be sensible; but if we may be permitted to compose and adorn his body with our own hands and give it burial, you will believe, we are persuaded, that this calamity is a greater one for Thessaly than for Thebes. For you have lost only a good commander; but we both that and freedom. For how shall we have the courage to ask another general from you, when we have not returned Pelopidas? This request the Thebans granted.
34.1
Those funeral rites were never surpassed in splendour, in the opinion of those who do not think splendour to consist in ivory, gold, and purple, like Philistus, who tells in wondering strains about the funeral of Dionysius, which formed the pompous conclusion of the great tragedy of his tyranny.
34.2
Alexander the Great, too, when Hephaestion died, not only sheared the manes of his horses and mules, but actually took away the battlements of the city-walls, in order that the cities might seem to be in mourning, assuming a shorn and dishevelled appearance instead of their former beauty. These honours, however, were dictated by despots, were performed under strong compulsion, and were attended with envy of those who received them and hatred of those who enforced them; they were a manifestation of no gratitude or esteem whatever, but of barbaric pomp and luxury and vain-glory, on the part of men who lavished their superfluous wealth on vain and sorry practices.
34.3
But that a man who was a commoner, dying in a strange country, in the absence of wife, children, and kinsmen, none asking and none compelling it, should be escorted and carried forth and crowned by so many peoples and cities eager to show him honour, rightly seemed to argue him supremely fortunate.
