Eumenes and Sertorius led armies that did not love them. Eumenes, a Greek secretary of Alexander, held the veterans together against Antigonus. Sertorius, a Roman outlaw, built a state in Spain and beat the generals Sulla sent after him.

Both were murdered by men they commanded. Plutarch admires the skill that kept those armies in the field, and he treats the betrayals as the price of leading troops who thought themselves the better born. He does not pick a lesser man between them.