Plutarch · a new plain-English translation from the Greek
Agasicles, the king of the Lacedaemonians, when someone marveled that although he was fond of listening he did not receive the sophist Philophanes, said, "I want to be a pupil only of those whose son I also am." And to one who asked how a man without a bodyguard could rule in safety, he said, "If he rules his people as fathers rule their sons."
Agesilaus the Great, once when he had drawn the lot to preside over a drinking party, was asked by the wine-steward how much he should pour for each guest. "If much wine has been prepared," he said, "give each as much as he asks; but if little, give an equal share to all." When some wrongdoer endured torture unflinchingly, he said, "What a thoroughly wicked man, to spend his endurance and fortitude on base and shameful deeds!" When someone praised an orator for his skill in magnifying small matters, he said, "Not even a cobbler is a good one who fits large shoes on a small foot."
When someone once said to him, "You have agreed," and kept repeating the same claim, he said, "Yes indeed, if it is just; but if not, I spoke, but I did not agree." And when the man added, "But surely kings must carry out whatever they nod their assent to," he replied, "No more than those who approach kings must ask for and speak what is just, aiming at what is timely and fitting for kings." Whenever he heard people blaming or praising someone, he thought it no less necessary to study the character of the speakers than the matter they spoke of.
Once, while he was still a boy, when the Gymnopaidiai were being celebrated, the master of the chorus placed him in an inconspicuous spot, and he accepted this even though he had already been declared king, saying, "Well done—for I will show that it is not places that make men honored, but men who make places honored." When a doctor prescribed for him a rather elaborate and complicated course of treatment, he said, "By the two gods, it is not my fixed purpose to live at all costs, nor do I accept every remedy."
Once, while he stood at the altar of the Goddess of the Bronze House sacrificing an ox, a louse bit him; he was not disturbed, but took it openly, in front of everyone, and killed it, saying, "By the gods, I gladly kill a conspirator even at the altar." On another occasion, seeing a mouse being dragged from its hole by a boy who held it, and when the mouse turned, bit the hand of its captor, and escaped, he pointed this out to those present and said, "When the smallest of creatures defends itself so against those who wrong it, think what men ought to do."
Wishing to launch a war against the Persian in order to free the Greeks living in Asia, he consulted the oracle of Zeus at Dodona, and when it bade him proceed, he reported the response to the ephors. They in turn ordered him to go to Delphi as well and inquire about the same matter. So he went to the oracle and asked in these words: "Apollo, do you approve of what my father also approved?" When the god assented, Agesilaus was chosen and set out on campaign accordingly.
When Tissaphernes, at first fearing Agesilaus, made a truce promising that the King would let the Greek cities be autonomous, but then, having summoned a large army from the King, declared war on him unless he withdrew from Asia, Agesilaus gladly welcomed this breach of the truce and set out as though he meant to advance into Caria. But when Tissaphernes had gathered his forces there, Agesilaus broke camp and invaded Phrygia instead, and after taking a great many cities and a quantity of money, he said to his friends, "To do wrong after making a truce is impious, but to outwit the enemy is not only just and glorious, but also pleasant and profitable."
Having been worsted in cavalry, he withdrew to Ephesus and directed the wealthy men to furnish a horse and a man each in his stead, so as to be excused from the campaign; and thus horses and capable men were quickly assembled in place of cowards and rich men. He said he was emulating Agamemnon, for that man too had accepted a fine mare and had excused a cowardly, wealthy man from campaigning. When, at his order, the sellers of booty put the captives up for sale naked, there were many buyers for their clothing, but people laughed at the bodies themselves—white and altogether soft from being raised in the shade—considering them useless and worth nothing. Agesilaus, standing by, said, "These are the things you fight for, and these are the men you fight against."
Having routed Tissaphernes near Lydia and killed a great many of his men, he overran the King's territory. When Tissaphernes sent him money and asked him to end the war, Agesilaus replied that it was the city's right to make peace, and that he took more pleasure in enriching his soldiers than in being rich himself, and that he considered it noble for Greeks not to accept gifts from their enemies but to win spoils instead.
When Megabates, the son of Spithridates, a young man of great beauty, approached him meaning to greet him with an embrace and a kiss, because he seemed to be greatly loved by him, Agesilaus drew back. When the boy stopped approaching him because of this, Agesilaus sought him out again. His friends said Agesilaus himself was to blame for having shrunk from the beautiful boy's kiss, and told him that if he did not now play the coward, the boy would still come to him. Agesilaus, after remaining alone with his thoughts for no little while and falling silent, said, "There is no need for us to persuade him after all; for I think I would rather rise above such desires than take by force even the most valorous city of those arrayed against me—since it is better to preserve one's own freedom than to strip others of theirs."
In most matters, then, this was the sort of man Agesilaus was; yet there were occasions when he made use of circumstance more for what was expedient. Once, when a rather chaotic breaking of camp took place, he left his sick beloved behind; and when the boy begged and called after him in tears, Agesilaus turned and said, "How hard it is to feel pity and to keep one's judgment at the same time."
Though otherwise exact and law-abiding, in matters concerning friends he regarded excessive strictness toward them as no more than a pretext. A short letter of his is preserved in which he intercedes for one of his friends, addressed to Idrieus the Carian, and reads thus: "If Nicias is not guilty, let him go; and if he is guilty, let him go for my sake; in any case, let him go."
As for his manner of life, he had nothing better than those around him: he abstained altogether from excess and drunkenness, and treated sleep not as a master but as something governed by the demands of his affairs. He bore heat and cold so well that he alone seemed always to make proper use of whatever the season brought. Camping in the midst of his soldiers, he slept in a bed no better than anyone else's. He continually said that a commander ought to surpass ordinary men not in softness, but in endurance and courage.
When someone asked what the laws of Lycurgus had won for Sparta, he said, "To despise pleasures." To one who marveled at the plainness of his clothing and food, and of the other Spartans besides, he said, "In exchange for this way of life, stranger, we reap freedom." When another urged him to relax his habits, on the ground that the uncertainty of fortune might never allow the occasion for such indulgence again, he replied, "But I train myself, I tell you, so as to seek no change amid any change." And even in old age he kept to the same regimen; to one who asked why, at his age, he went about without a tunic in the depths of winter, he said, "So that the young may imitate me, having as their example their eldest men and rulers."
When the Thasians, as he marched through their territory with his army, sent him barley meal, geese, sweetmeats, honey-cakes, and all sorts of other costly foods and drinks, he accepted only the barley meal and ordered the bearers to carry the rest back again, since it was of no use to his men. When they pressed and begged him earnestly to accept it all, he ordered it distributed to the helots instead. When asked the reason, he said, "It is not fitting for men who practice manly virtue to indulge in such delicacies, for the things that entice servile natures are foreign to free men."
On another occasion, because the Thasians believed they had been greatly benefited by him, they honored him with temples and divine rites and sent an embassy about the matter. Having read the honors the envoys brought him, he asked whether their homeland had the power to make men gods. When they said it did, he replied, "Come then, make yourselves gods first; and if you manage that, then I will believe that you can also make me one."
When the Greek peoples of Asia voted to set up statues of him in their most illustrious cities, he added in reply, "Let there be no image of me, painted, molded, or fashioned in any way." Once, seeing in Asia a house roofed with square-cut beams, he asked the owner whether square timber grew there. When the man said no, but round, Agesilaus said, "Well then—if it had been square, would you have made it round?"
When asked once how far the boundaries of Laconia extended, he brandished his spear and said, "As far as this can reach." When another asked why Sparta had no walls, he pointed to the citizens under arms and said, "These are the walls of the Lacedaemonians." And when someone else asked the same question, he said, "Cities ought to be walled not with stones and timber, but with the virtues of those who dwell in them." He urged his friends to strive to be rich not in money, but in courage and virtue.
Whenever he wanted some task done quickly by his soldiers, he himself was the first to set his hand to it, in full view of everyone. He took pride in working no less hard than anyone else, and in ruling himself more than in being king. Seeing a lame Spartan setting out for war and looking for a horse, he said, "Do you not see that war has need not of men who flee, but of men who stand fast?" When asked how he had won such great fame, he said, "By despising death." When someone asked why the Spartans went into battle to the music of pipes, he said, "So that, marching in step to the rhythm, both the cowardly and the brave may be made plain to see."
When someone called the king of the Persians blessed for being so very young, he said, "But Priam too was not unfortunate at that age." Having brought a great part of Asia under his own control, he resolved to march against the King himself, so as to put a stop to his sitting idle and corrupting the popular leaders of the Greeks.
But when he was recalled by the ephors because of the Greek war that had broken out around Sparta on account of money sent by the Persian, he said that a good ruler must be ruled by the laws, and sailed away from Asia, leaving behind him great longing among the Greeks there. Since the Persian coinage bore the stamp of an archer, as he broke camp he remarked that he was being driven out of Asia by thirty thousand of the King's archers—for so many gold darics had been carried to Athens and Thebes through Timocrates and distributed among the popular leaders that the peoples were stirred up to war against the Spartans.
And he wrote back to the ephors this letter: "Agesilaus to the ephors, greetings. We have subdued the greater part of Asia, driven back the barbarians, and made great quantities of weapons in Ionia. But since you bid me return within the appointed time, I am obeying the letter, and shall very nearly outrun it; for I hold my command not for myself, but for the city and its allies. And a ruler truly rules justly only when he is himself ruled by the laws and the ephors, or by whatever other officers there may be in the city."
When he had crossed the Hellespont and was marching through Thrace, he asked nothing of any of the barbarians there, but sent word ahead to each people, asking whether he should pass through their land as a friend or as an enemy. The rest received him in a friendly manner and escorted him on his way; but the people called the Trausi, to whom Xerxes too, it is said, had given gifts, demanded of Agesilaus as the price of passage a hundred talents of silver and as many women. He, mocking them, said, "Then why did they not come at once to take it?"—and advanced, and meeting them drawn up for battle, routed them, killed many, and passed through.
He sent the same question to the king of the Macedonians; and when that king said he needed to deliberate, Agesilaus said, "Let him deliberate, then—but we will be on our way." The king, marveling at his boldness and afraid, ordered him to be escorted forward as a friend. Since the Thessalians were allied with his enemies, he ravaged their country, and sent Xenocles and Scythes to Larissa to negotiate friendship. But when these men were seized and held under guard, the rest of the army, taking this hard, thought Agesilaus ought to encamp around Larissa and besiege it; he, however, said he would not wish to gain the whole of Thessaly at the cost of losing either of the two men, and instead recovered them under a truce.
When he learned that a battle had taken place near Corinth, in which very few Spartans had died but a very great number of Corinthians, Athenians, and their other allies, he was not seen to be overjoyed or elated by the victory; rather, he gave a heavy groan and said, "Alas for Greece, which has destroyed at her own hands so many men as would have sufficed to conquer all the barbarians!" When the Pharsalians harassed and molested his army, he routed them with five hundred cavalry and set up a trophy at Narthacium.
He cherished that victory above all others, because, having organized the cavalry entirely by himself, it was by this force alone that he overcame those who prided themselves most on their horsemanship. When Diphridas brought word from home that he should invade Boeotia at once, straight from the march, even though Agesilaus had intended to do this later with greater preparation, he did not disobey the authorities; instead, summoning two regiments from the troops campaigning around Corinth, he invaded Boeotia.
Engaging at Coronea with the Thebans, Athenians, Argives, Corinthians, and both branches of the Locrians, he was victorious, even though his body was in poor condition from many wounds—in what Xenophon calls the greatest battle of his time. Yet despite so many successes and victories, he changed nothing in his manner or mode of life once he returned home.
Seeing some of the citizens growing proud and arrogant on account of horse-breeding, he persuaded his sister Cynisca to enter a chariot at Olympia, wishing to show the Greeks that such things are a matter not of any virtue at all, but of wealth and expenditure. Keeping the wise Xenophon as a valued companion, he urged him to send for his sons and raise them in Lacedaemon, so that they might be trained in the noblest of all lessons—how to rule and how to be ruled.
On another occasion, when asked why the Spartans were held in greater esteem than other peoples, he said, "Because, more than others, they practice ruling and being ruled." When Lysander died, Agesilaus discovered that a large faction had been formed—one that Lysander, immediately upon his return from Asia, had organized against him—and he set out to expose what sort of citizen the man had truly been in life. And he read a speech left behind in a book, one that had been written by Cleon of Halicarnassus,
which Lysander had intended to take up and deliver to the people, concerning revolutionary measures and a change of the constitution, he wished to bring it out into the open. But when one of the elders went over the speech, and, fearing its cleverness, advised him not to dig up Lysander again but rather to bury the speech along with him, he was persuaded and kept quiet. As for those who openly opposed him, he did not harass them; instead he managed to have some of them regularly sent out as generals and magistrates, and then showed them, once they had gained power, to have become wicked and greedy for gain; and afterward, when they were brought to trial, he would come to their aid and fight on their side, thereby making them his own and winning them over to himself, so that no one remained his rival. Someone asked him to write on his behalf to his personal friends in Asia, so that he might obtain justice. "But my friends," he said, "do justice by themselves, even if I do not write."
Someone showed him the city's wall, strong and built with extreme solidity, and asked whether it seemed beautiful to him. "Yes, by Zeus," he said, "beautiful — but not as a dwelling for men, rather for women." When a certain Megarian was boasting to him grandly about his city, he said, "Young man, your words need a great deal of power behind them." Whatever he saw others admiring, he seemed not even to notice. Once Callippides, the tragic actor, who had a name and reputation among the Greeks and was courted by everyone, first came up to him and greeted him, and then, striding boldly, threw himself in among those walking with the king and made a show of himself, expecting that Agesilaus would begin some friendly exchange. At last he said, "Do you not recognize me, O king, and have you not heard who I am?" Agesilaus looked at him and said, "But are you not Callippides the mimic-player?" — for that is what the Spartans call actors. When he was invited to hear a man who could imitate the nightingale's song, he declined, saying, "I have heard the nightingale herself many times."
As for Menecrates the physician, since he had succeeded in some treatments given up as hopeless and had been called "Zeus," and made vulgar use of this title, and even dared to write to Agesilaus in these terms, "Menecrates Zeus to King Agesilaus, greeting," Agesilaus, without reading the rest, wrote back, "King Agesilaus to Menecrates, health."
When Conon and Pharnabazus, ruling the sea with the King's fleet, were besieging the coastal regions of Laconia, and the wall of Athens was rebuilt with money supplied by Pharnabazus, the Spartans made peace with the King; and they sent their citizen Antalcidas to Tiribazus, handing over to the King the Greeks of Asia, on whose behalf Agesilaus had gone to war. For this reason it fell out that Agesilaus had the least share in that disgrace; for Antalcidas was his enemy and pursued the peace by every means, on the ground that the war was making Agesilaus greater and more famous and powerful. Nevertheless, to the man who said that the Spartans were medizing, he replied that it was rather the Medes who were laconizing.
When he was once asked which of the virtues was better, courage or justice, he said that courage was of no use if justice were not present; but if all men became just, there would be no need of courage at all. Since the inhabitants of Asia were accustomed to call the King of the Persians "Great," he said, "How is he greater than I am, unless he is also more just and more temperate?" He used to say that the inhabitants of Asia, though free, were bad, while as slaves they were good. Asked how one might best win a good reputation among men, he said, "By speaking the best things and doing the noblest deeds." He said that a general ought to have boldness toward the enemy but goodwill toward those under his command. When someone asked what boys ought to learn, he said, "The very things they will use when they become men."
While he was judging a certain case, and the accuser had spoken well but the defendant poorly, saying to each point only, "Agesilaus, the king must uphold the laws," he replied, "And if someone were breaking into your house, or taking away your cloak, would you expect the builder or the weaver of the cloak to come to your aid?" When a letter was brought to him from the King of the Persians, after the peace had been made which the Persian envoy, together with Callias the Spartan, had brought about, concerning guest-friendship and alliance, he refused to accept it, saying that word should be sent back to the King: "Privately there is no need for him to send me letters; but if he shows himself a friend to Sparta and well-disposed toward Greece, then I too shall be his friend with all my power. But if he is caught plotting against us, let him be assured that I will be no friend to him, however many letters I receive."
Being exceedingly fond of his children, it is said that with his little ones he would ride astride a reed as if it were a horse, playing at home; and when he was seen by one of his friends, he begged him to tell no one, until he himself had become a father of children. While he was continually at war with the Thebans and had been wounded in battle, they say Antalcidas said to him, "You are getting fine lessons from the Thebans, having taught them, against their will and their ignorance, how to fight." And indeed they say that the Thebans became, at that time, the most warlike of all against themselves, because of the many campaigns the Spartans made against them. For this reason the ancient Lycurgus, in the so-called Rhetras, forbade making war repeatedly on the same people, so that they might not learn how to fight.
When he once heard that the allies were growing resentful because of the constant campaigns, since so few Spartans were followed by so many allies, wishing to demonstrate their true numbers, he ordered all the allies to sit down together, mixed with one another, while the Spartans sat apart by themselves. Then he had the potters called to stand up first; and when they had stood up, he had the smiths called next, then the carpenters and builders in turn, and each of the other trades. And so nearly all the allies stood up, but not one of the Spartans — for it was forbidden to them to practice or learn a manual trade. Then Agesilaus laughed and said, "You see, gentlemen, how many more soldiers we send out than you do."
In the battle at Leuctra, when many of the Spartans had fled and, under the law, were liable to the penalties for it, the ephors, seeing the city bereft of men and in need of soldiers, wished to lift the disgrace while still preserving the laws. They therefore chose Agesilaus as lawgiver; but he, coming forward before the assembly, said, "I would not become the maker of other laws — for to the laws that exist I would neither add anything, nor take anything away, nor alter anything; but as for the laws we already have, let it be resolved that they hold good from tomorrow onward."
When Epaminondas came on with such a torrent and flood of forces, the Thebans and their allies exulting greatly in their victory, Agesilaus nevertheless kept him from the city and forced him to turn back, though those within the city were few. In the battle near Mantinea he urged the Spartans to let everyone else alone and to fight only against Epaminondas, saying that only sensible men were truly brave, and that only they were responsible for victory: "If, then, we remove this man, we shall most easily bring the rest under our power; for they are witless and worth nothing." And this indeed came to pass; for while victory lay with Epaminondas and the Spartans were in flight, when he turned to rally his own men, one of the Spartans struck him a mortal blow, and after he fell, the men with Agesilaus turned back from their flight and made the victory an even match — the Thebans appearing far worse, and the Spartans far better, than before.
When Sparta was in need of money for war and for maintaining mercenaries, Agesilaus went to Egypt, summoned by the Egyptian king to serve for pay; but because of the plainness of his dress he came to be despised by the people there, for they expected to see the King of Sparta, like the King of Persia, resplendently adorned in body — holding as they did a poor opinion of what makes a king. He showed them, however, in the meantime, that greatness and worth ought to be won by intelligence and courage. When he saw that those about to stand with him were afraid of the coming danger because of the enemy's numbers — for they were two hundred thousand — and the fewness of his own men, before the battle line was drawn up he resolved
to offer sacrifice beforehand, unknown to the others; and on his left hand, which was covered, he wrote the word "Victory." And taking the liver from the diviner, he laid it upon the hand thus inscribed; and holding it for a good while, he pretended to be in doubt and perplexity, until the letters, being pressed into the liver, were imprinted upon it. Then he displayed it to those who were about to fight alongside him, saying that the gods had revealed victory through the writing. Thinking they now had a sure token of triumph, they took courage for the battle. When the enemy, because of their numbers, were digging a trench around his camp, and Nectanebo, his ally, wished to go out and fight it out, he said he would not prevent the enemy from making themselves equal in numbers to his own men. But when the trench lacked only a little of being complete, he drew up his forces at the still-open gap,
and, fighting against equal numbers on equal terms, routed them and made great slaughter of the enemy with the few soldiers about him, and sent much money to the city. On the voyage back from Egypt, as he lay dying, he instructed those about him to make no image of his body, molded, painted, or otherwise represented: "For if I have done any noble deed, that will be my monument; but if not, not even all the statues in the world will help — being the works of mere craftsmen, worth nothing."
Agesipolis, son of Cleombrotus, when someone said that Philip had razed Olynthus in a few days, said, "By the gods, he will not build another such city in many times that span." When another said that Agesipolis had been given as a hostage among the reigning kings in their prime, rather than their children or wives, he said, "That is only just; for it is right that we ourselves bear our own faults." When he wished to send for hunting dogs from home, and someone said, "There is no export of them allowed," he said, "Nor was there, formerly, of men either — but now there is."
Agesipolis, son of Pausanias, when the Athenians, in a dispute they had with the Megarians against one another, were taking the city of Megara as arbiter, said, "It is shameful, O Athenians, that you, the leaders of the Greeks, should know justice less well than the Megarians."
Agis, son of Archidamus, when the ephors once said, "Go, taking the young men, against the fatherland of this man; he himself will lead you to the acropolis," said, "And how, O ephors, can it be right to trust so many young men to a man who is betraying his own fatherland?" Asked what study is most practiced at Sparta, he said, "Knowing how to rule and be ruled." He said the Spartans did not ask how many the enemy were, but where they were. At Mantinea, when he was being prevented from fighting the enemy, who were more numerous, he said, "A man who wishes to rule many must be willing to fight many." When someone asked how many the Spartans were, he said, "As many as are enough to keep off the wicked." Passing along the walls of the Corinthians,
and seeing them high and strong and stretching for a great distance, he said, "What women live in this place?" When a certain sophist said, "Speech is the greatest of all things," he replied, "Then, if you keep silent, you are worth nothing." When the Argives, after their defeat, again met him rather boldly, and he saw his allies troubled, he said, "Take courage, men; for if we who are victorious are afraid, what do you think those we have defeated are doing?"
To the envoy from Abdera, who, after speaking at length, stopped and asked what he should report to his fellow citizens, he said, "That for as long a time as you wished to speak, I listened in silence." When some praised the Eleans because they were most just in the conduct of the Olympic games, he said, "And what great or wonderful thing do they do,
if once every five years, on a single day, they practice justice?" To those who said that some members of the other royal house were jealous of him, he said, "Then their own troubles will grieve them, and, besides these, my good fortune and that of my friends as well." When someone advised that a way of retreat should be given to fleeing enemies, he said, "How then
shall we fight against those who stand firm through courage, if we do not fight those who flee through cowardice?" When someone spoke of the freedom of the Greeks as not ignoble, yet difficult to accomplish, he said, "Your words, stranger, need power and money behind them." When someone said that Philip would make Greece impossible to set foot in, he said, "Our own occupations at home are enough for us, stranger."
An envoy who had come from Perinthus to Sparta spoke at great length; and when he stopped speaking and asked Agis what he should report to the Perinthians, he said, "What else, than that you scarcely stopped speaking, while I kept silent?" Going as envoy alone to Philip, when Philip said, "What is this? Do you come alone?" he said, "Yes — for it is to one man that I come." When one of the older men said to him, since he himself was old,
seeing that the ancient customs were being relaxed and other, corrupt ones creeping in, so that things at Sparta were now turned upside down, Agis said playfully, "Things are proceeding quite logically, if this is happening; for I too, when I was a boy, heard from my father that things had been turned upside down among them, and he said that his own father had told him the same thing when he was a boy — so that we should not be surprised if later things are worse than earlier ones, but rather if they should ever turn out better or even the same." Asked how a man might remain free, he said, "By despising death."
Agis the younger, when Demades said that the Laconian swords were so short that jugglers could swallow them, replied, "And yet the Spartans reach their enemies well enough with them." To a wicked man who kept asking who was the best Spartan, he said, "The one least like you." Agis, the last of the Spartan kings, seized by ambush and condemned by the ephors without trial, as he was being led to the noose, seeing one of the attendants weeping, said, "Stop weeping for me, fellow; for even though I am perishing so unlawfully
and unjustly, I am superior to those who are killing me." And having said this, he willingly gave his neck to the noose. Acrotatus, when his parents asked him to join them in some unjust act, refused for a while; but when they pressed him, he said, "While I was with you, I knew no notion of justice at all; but since you gave me over to my fatherland and its laws, and to justice besides,
and “goodness” as best you could, I shall try to follow these rather than you. Since you wish me to act rightly, and since what is right is right both for a private citizen and much more for a ruler, I shall do what you wish, but I must decline what you say.” Alcamenes, son of Teleclus, when someone asked how a man might best preserve his kingship, said, “If he does not set gain above honor.” When another asked why he would not accept gifts from the Messenians, he said, “Because if I take them, it is impossible to keep peace with the laws.” And when someone remarked that, though he possessed a sufficient fortune, he lived frugally, he said, “It is a fine thing for a man of many possessions to live by calculation and not by appetite.”
Anaxandridas, son of Leon, said to a man distressed at the exile that had been imposed on him by the city, “My good fellow, do not dread fleeing the city, but dread fleeing justice.” To a man who spoke rightly enough before the ephors, but at greater length than was needed, he said, “Stranger, you use what is needed not as it is needed.” When someone asked why the Spartans hand over their fields to the helots instead of tending them themselves, he said, “Because we acquired these men for our own sake, not to tend fields.”
When another said that reputation does harm and that the man who is rid of it will be happy, he said, “Then, by your reasoning, wrongdoers would be happy — for how could a man who commits sacrilege or injustice be concerned for his reputation?” When another asked why the Spartans face danger boldly in war, he said, “Because we practice reverence concerning life, not fear, as others do.”
When someone asked him why the elders judge capital cases over several days, and even if a man is acquitted he is nonetheless still liable to trial, he said, “They judge over many days because for those who err fatally in a matter of death there is no chance to reconsider; and the law requires that he remain liable, because it is also lawful, under this same law, to reconsider for the better.” Anaxander, son of Eurycrates,
when someone asked why they do not gather money into the public treasury, said, “So that those who become its guardians are not corrupted.” Anaxilas, to a man wondering why the ephors do not rise before the kings, even though they are appointed by the kings, said, “For the same reason that they also serve as ephors.” Androcleidas the Laconian, having been maimed in the leg, enrolled himself among
the warriors; and when some objected and tried to prevent him because he was maimed, he said, “But it is not the man who flees, but the man who stands his ground, who must fight the enemy ranged against him.” Antalcidas, being initiated at Samothrace, was asked by the priest what was the most terrible thing he had done in his life, and said, “If I have done any such thing, the gods themselves will know it.” To an Athenian who called the Spartans uneducated, he said, “At any rate, we alone
have learned no evil from you.” And when another Athenian said to him, “Yet indeed we have often driven you back from the Cephisus,” he said, “But we have never driven you back from the Eurotas.” When asked how a man might best please people, he said, “If he converses with them as agreeably as possible, but deals with them as helpfully as possible.” When a sophist was about to recite an encomium of Heracles, he said, “Who, then,
blames him?” To Agesilaus, who had been struck in battle by the Thebans, he said, “You are paying the tuition fee, having taught them to fight when they neither wished nor knew how.” For it seemed that through Agesilaus's repeated campaigns against them they had become warlike. He used to say that the young men were the walls of Sparta, and the points of their spears its boundaries. To a man who asked why the Spartans use short daggers in war,
he said, “Because we fight close to the enemy.” Antiochus, when he was ephor, on hearing that Philip had given the Messenians their territory, asked whether he had also given them the power to hold it by fighting for it. Areus, when some praised, not their own wives, but certain other men's wives, said, “By the gods, one ought not to speak carelessly about fine and good women at all — they should remain entirely unknown,
whatever sort they may be, except to those who live with them.” Once, passing through Selinus in Sicily, he saw an elegiac couplet inscribed on a monument: “These men, once quenching tyranny, bronze Ares took; around the gates of Selinus they died.” He said, “You died justly, for attempting to quench a tyranny while it was still burning — you ought instead to have let the whole thing burn to the ground.” Ariston, when someone praised the saying of Cleomenes
that when asked what a good king ought to do, he had said one should benefit one's friends and harm one's enemies, said, “And how much better, my good fellow, to benefit one's friends and make one's enemies into friends?” This saying, generally attributed to Socrates by everyone, is also credited to him. When someone asked how many Spartans there were in number, he said, “As many as
are enough to keep off the enemy.” When an Athenian was reading a funeral eulogy for those who had fallen at the hands of the Lacedaemonians, he said, “What sort of men, then, do you suppose ours are, who conquered these?” Archidamidas, to a man who praised Charilaus because he was gentle alike to everyone, said, “And how could a man be justly praised, if he is gentle even to the wicked?” When someone found fault with Hecataeus the sophist because,
though received at the common mess, he said nothing at all, he said, “You seem not to know that the man who knows how to speak also knows the occasion for speaking.” Archidamus, son of Zeuxidamus, when someone asked him who governs Sparta, said, “The laws, and the magistrates according to the laws.” To a man who praised a lyre-singer and admired his skill, he said, “My good fellow, what honor
will there be from you for good men, when you praise a lyre-singer so highly?” And when someone commending a harpist to him said, “This man is a good harpist,” he said, “Among us, this sort of man is a good soup-maker” — meaning that it makes no difference whether pleasure is produced through the sound of instruments or through the preparation of relish and soup. When someone promised to make his wine sweet, he said, “To what end? For
it will cost more and will make our men less fit for war.” When marching against the city of the Corinthians with an army, he saw hares starting up from the ground near the wall; so he said to his fellow soldiers, “Our enemies are easy prey.” When two men took him as their arbiter, he led them into the precinct of Athena of the Bronze House and made them swear to abide by his judgment; and when they had sworn, he said, “I decide,
then, that you shall not leave this precinct until you have settled your differences with one another.” When Dionysius, tyrant of Sicily, sent costly clothing for his daughters, he did not accept it, saying, “I fear that if the girls put it on, they will appear ugly to me.” Seeing his son fighting rashly against the Athenians, he said, “Either add to your strength, or lessen your ambition.” Archidamus, son
of Agesilaus, when Philip, after the battle at Chaeronea, wrote him a rather harsh letter, wrote back, “If you were to measure your own shadow, you would not find it grown any larger than before your victory.” When asked how much territory the Spartans control, he said, “As much as they can reach with the spear.” Periander the physician, being of considerable repute in his art and praised in every way, but writing
poor poems, he said, “Why in the world, Periander, do you wish, instead of being called a fine physician, to be called a bad poet?” In the war against Philip, when some advised that the battle should be joined far from home, he said, “But that is not what one should look to, but rather where we shall be superior to the enemy in the fight.” To those who praised him when he won the battle against the Arcadians, he said, “It would have been better
if we had conquered them by good judgment rather than by force.” When he invaded Arcadia and learned that the Eleans were coming to their aid, he sent them a message: “Archidamus to the Eleans: quiet is a fine thing.” When the allies, in the Peloponnesian War, kept asking how much money would suffice, and demanded that the contributions be fixed, he said, “War does not feed on a fixed ration.” Seeing a catapult-shot
brought then for the first time from Sicily, he cried out, “Heracles, a man's valor is done for!” When the Greeks were unwilling to obey him and to break off their agreements with Antigonus and Craterus and the Macedonians, and to be free, on the ground that the Lacedaemonians would prove harsher masters than the Macedonians, he said, “A sheep always utters the same sound, but a man utters many and varied sounds, until he accomplishes what he has resolved.” Astycratidas, when someone said
to him after King Agis had been defeated in the battle against Antipater near Megalopolis, “What will you do, Lacedaemonians? Will you be slaves to the Macedonians?” said, “What then? Could Antipater prevent us from dying in battle for Sparta?” Bias, ambushed by Iphicrates the Athenian general, when asked by his soldiers what should be done, said, “What else,
than that you should be saved, and I should die fighting?” Brasidas, catching a mouse among some dried figs and being bitten, let it go; then he said to those present, “Nothing is so small that it cannot save itself by daring to defend itself against those who attack it.” In a certain battle, struck by a javelin through his shield, he pulled the spear out of the wound and with that very weapon killed the enemy; and when asked how he had been wounded,
he said, “By my shield betraying me.” Setting out for war, he wrote to the ephors, “Whatever I resolve, I shall do in the war, or I shall die.” When it happened that he fell while freeing the Greeks in the region of Thrace, and envoys sent to Lacedaemon came first to his mother Argileonis, she first asked whether Brasidas had died nobly; and when the Thracians praised him extravagantly and said
that there was no other man like him, she said, “You do not know what you are saying, strangers. Brasidas was indeed a good man, but Sparta has many better than he.” Damonidas, placed last in the chorus by the man arranging it, said, “Well done, chorus-master — you have discovered how even this position, though without honor, may become honorable.” Damis, in response to the message sent by Alexander
that they should vote him a god, said, “We grant Alexander, if he wishes, the title of god.” Damindas, when Philip invaded the Peloponnese and someone said, “The Lacedaemonians are likely to suffer terribly, unless they come to terms with him,” said, “You weakling, what terrible thing could we suffer, we who scorn death?” Dercyllidas, when Pyrrhus held his army in Spartan territory, was sent to him as an envoy; and when Pyrrhus demanded that they receive back
their Cleonymus, or else learn that they were braver than no other people, he answered, “If he is a god, we do not fear him, for we do no wrong; and if he is a man, he is no better than we are.” Demaratus, when Orontes had treated him rather harshly and someone said, “Orontes has treated you harshly, Demaratus,” said, “He has done me no wrong; for those who deal with men to please them do harm,
not those who deal with them in enmity.” When someone asked why they dishonor those who have lost their shields, but no longer those who have lost their helmets and breastplates, he said, “Because men put these on for their own sake, but the shield for the sake of the common formation.” Listening to a harpist, he said, “He seems to me to play the fool not badly.” In a certain council, asked whether
it was from folly or from lack of words that he was silent, he said, “But a fool, at least, could not be capable of keeping silent.” When someone asked why, though he was a king, he lived in exile from Sparta, he said, “Because the laws are stronger than the king.” When one of the Persians, because of his continual bribery, took away his beloved and said, “Laconian, I have hunted down your beloved,” he said, “By the
gods, you have not hunted him — you have bought him.” When one of the Persians revolted from the king and was persuaded by Demaratus to return, and the king was about to put the Persian to death, he said, “It is shameful, O king, that when he was your enemy you could not obtain justice from him for his revolt, but now that he has become your friend, you kill him.” To a man who fawned upon the king
and often mocked him about his exile, he said, “I will not fight you, stranger, for I have used up my life's allotted portion.” Ecprepes, as ephor, took an adze and cut off two of the nine strings of Phrynis the musician, saying, “Do not do violence to music.” Epaenetus used to say that liars were the cause of all faults and wrongs alike. Euboidas, hearing some men praising another man's wife, would not accept it,
saying that concerning a woman's nature there ought to be no talk at all among outsiders. Eudamidas, son of Archidamus and brother of Agis, seeing Xenocrates, already an old man, philosophizing with his disciples in the Academy, asked who the old man was; and when someone said that he was a wise man and one of those who seek virtue, he said, “And when will he use it, if he is only now seeking it?” And hearing a philosopher
argue that only the wise man is a good general, he said, “The argument is admirable, but the speaker is not to be trusted; for he has not been through the trumpet's call.” When Xenocrates had delivered his lecture and was concluding it, Eudamidas was present; and when one of his companions said, “It was just when we arrived that he stopped,” he said, “Quite right — if indeed he had already said what he intended to say.” And when the other said, “It
would have been good to hear,” he said, “Would we, then, having come upon a man who has already dined, think it right to make him dine again?” When someone asked why, when the citizens were choosing the war against the Macedonians, he alone judged it best to keep quiet, he said, “Because I do not wish to prove them liars.” When another cited the prizes of valor won against the Persians and urged him on to war, he said, “You seem to me not to know,
at least, that it is the same thing to fight fifty wolves after having conquered a thousand sheep.” When a certain harpist had had great success, they asked him what sort of man he thought him to be; he said, “A great charmer in a small matter.” When someone praised Athens, he said, “And who could rightly praise this city, which no one, once he had become better, has loved?” When an Argive said that
the Laconians grow worse when traveling abroad, since they depart from their ancestral laws, he said, “But you, at least, do not become worse but better when you come to Sparta.” When Alexander proclaimed at Olympia that all exiles might return to their own cities except the Thebans, he said, “An unfortunate proclamation for you, Thebans — but a glorious one, for Alexander fears you alone.” When asked for what reason before
...before dangers, they sacrifice to the Muses, "so that," he said, "their deeds might win a fitting report."
Eurycratidas son of Anaxandridas, when someone asked why the ephors judge contractual disputes with each state individually, said, "So that we may trust one another even in the midst of enemies."
Zeuxidamus, when someone asked why they keep the laws concerning courage unwritten, and do not give them to the young to read once they are enrolled, said, "Because we must accustom ourselves to deeds of manly virtue rather than attend to writings."
When an Aetolian said that for men capable of manly deeds war is better than peace, he said, "No, by the gods, but for such men death is better than life." Herondas, when at Athens a man had been convicted on a charge of idleness, being present and inquiring into it, ordered that the man who had lost this suit over his liberty be pointed out to him.
Thearidas, sharpening a sword, when asked if it was sharp, said, "Sharper than slander."
Themisteas, being a seer, foretold to King Leonidas the destruction that was to befall him and those campaigning with him at Thermopylae; and when Leonidas sent him away to Lacedaemon on the pretext of reporting what would happen, but in truth so that he would not perish with the rest, he would not consent, but said, "I was sent as a fighter, not a messenger."
Theopompus, to one who asked how a king might most safely guard his kingship, said, "By granting his friends a rightful freedom of speech, and by not overlooking, so far as he is able, wrongs done to his subjects." To the stranger who said that among his own citizens he was called a lover of Sparta, he said, "It would be better for you to be called a lover of your own city than a lover of Sparta." And when the envoy from Elis said that his fellow citizens had sent him away for this very reason, that he alone had emulated the Laconian way of life, Theopompus said, "And which is better — your life, or that of your other citizens?" When the man said his own, Theopompus said, "How then could that city be kept safe, when among so many only one man is good?" And when someone said that Sparta is kept safe because of her kings, since they are fit to command, he said, "No — because the citizens are fit to obey."
When the people of Pylos voted him greater honors, he wrote back that "time increases moderate honors, but effaces those that are excessive." When someone showed him a wall and asked whether it was strong and high, he said, "Not even if women had built it."
Thorycion, coming from Delphi and seeing Philip's army occupying the pass at the Isthmus, said, "Bad gatekeepers you have, Corinthians — the Peloponnese has."
Thectamenes, when the ephors had condemned him to death, went away smiling; and when one of those present asked whether he now despised the laws of Sparta, he said, "No — I am glad that I must pay this penalty without having asked or borrowed anything from anyone."
Hippodamus, when Agis was drawing up against Archidamus and Hippodamus had been sent with Agis to Sparta to see to necessary matters, said, "I shall die no nobler death than fighting bravely for Sparta" — he had already lived beyond eighty years — and after saying this he took up his arms, took his place at the king's right hand, and died fighting.
Hippocratidas, when the satrap of Caria wrote to him that a Lacedaemonian, aware of a certain conspiracy, had kept silent about it, and asked what he should do with the man, wrote back, "If you have done him some great benefit, kill him; but if not, banish him from your country as one worthless in respect of virtue." And once, when a boy he met, followed by a lover, was thrown into confusion, he said, "One ought to walk only with such companions that, seen in their company, you keep the same color."
Callicratidas the admiral, when Lysander's friends asked him to let them kill one of their enemies and take fifty talents for it — though he himself was in great need of money to pay the sailors — would not consent. Cleander, who was his adviser, said, "But I myself would have taken it, were I you." "So would I," he replied, "were I you." Arriving at Sardis before Cyrus the younger, who was an ally of the Lacedaemonians, to get money for the fleet, he sent word on the first day that he wished to meet with Cyrus; but on hearing that Cyrus was drinking, he said, "I will wait until he has finished drinking," and left for that day, since he judged it too discourteous to press the matter when he learned it was not possible to meet him. The next day, hearing again that Cyrus was drinking and would not come forward, he said, "One must not be so eager
to get money as to do anything unworthy of Sparta," and departed for Ephesus, calling down many curses on those who had first been corrupted by the barbarians and had taught them insolence through wealth; and he swore before those present that as soon as he reached Sparta he would do everything in his power to reconcile the Greeks with one another, so that they might be more formidable to the barbarians and no longer need the barbarians' strength against each other.
Asked what sort of men the Ionians are, he said, "As free men, bad; as slaves, good." When Cyrus sent ahead pay for the soldiers, and gifts for Callicratidas himself, he took only the pay and sent back the gifts, saying that there was no need for a private friendship between himself and Cyrus, since the friendship already existing in common between Cyrus and all the Lacedaemonians was enough for him as well.
When he was about to fight a sea battle off Arginusae, and Hermon the helmsman said it would be well to sail away, since the Athenian triremes were far more numerous, he said, "And what of that? To flee is shameful and harmful to Sparta; but to stand fast and either die or conquer is best." Having offered sacrifice beforehand, when he heard from the seer that the burnt offerings signified victory for the army but death for the general,
he was not at all dismayed, but said, "Sparta does not depend on one man; for if I die, my country will be no worse off, but if I yield to the enemy, it will be worse off." So, appointing Cleander commander in his place, he set out for the battle, and died fighting.
Cleombrotus son of Pausanias, when a certain stranger was disputing with his father about virtue, said, "Up to this point my father is better than you — until you too have begotten a son."
Cleomenes son of Anaxandrides said that Homer was the poet of the Lacedaemonians, and Hesiod that of the helots — the one having taught how one must make war, the other how one must farm. Having made a seven-day truce with the Argives, he watched for the third night, when they were sleeping because they trusted the truce, and fell upon them, killing some and taking others captive.
When reproached for breaking his oaths, he said he had not sworn to include the nights along with the days; and besides, whatever harm one does to one's enemies is held, by gods and men alike, to lie beyond the reach of justice. As it happened, he was repulsed from Argos, the city he had betrayed the truce to attack, because the women took up the arms hanging in the temples and defended it against him with them; and later, having gone out of his mind, he seized a small knife and cut himself open from the ankles up to the vital parts, and so ended his life, laughing and grinning. When the seer tried to dissuade him from leading the army against the city of the Argives, saying the retreat from it would prove shameful, he approached the city all the same,
and when he saw the gates shut and the women upon the walls, he said, "Does this retreat seem shameful to you, when, with their men dead, the women have shut the gates?" To the Argives who reviled him as a perjurer and an impious man, he said, "To speak ill of me lies in your power; to do ill to you lies in mine."
To the envoys from Samos who urged him to make war on Polycrates the tyrant, and made a long speech of it, he said, "Of what you have said, I no longer remember the beginning; and because of that I do not understand the middle; and the end I do not approve." When a pirate who had overrun the countryside, upon being captured, said, "I had no food for my soldiers,
so I came to take by force from those who had it but would not give it willingly," he said, "Concise wickedness." When some worthless fellow spoke ill of him, he said, "Is it for this reason that you speak ill of everyone — so that in defending themselves people will have no time to speak of your own vice?" When one of the citizens said that a good king ought to be gentle in every respect, he said, "Yes —
up to the point of not thereby inviting contempt." Struck down by a long illness, he began attending to purifiers and seers, though he had paid them no heed before; and when someone expressed surprise, he said, "Why are you surprised? I am not the same man now that I was then; and not being the same, I do not approve the same things." When a certain sophist was discoursing on courage, he laughed a great deal; and when the man said, "Why do you laugh, Cleomenes,
when you hear someone discoursing on courage — and that too though you are a king?" he said, "Because, stranger, if the swallow too were speaking of it, I would do the same; but if it were an eagle, I would keep quite still." When the Argives claimed to have made up for their earlier defeat, he said, "I am amazed if, by the addition of two syllables, you have now become better men than you were before." When someone reviled him and
said, "You are soft, Cleomenes," he said, "Better that than unjust; but you love money, though you have enough of it." A certain lyre-player, wishing to commend himself to him, praised the man in various respects and said he was the best lyre-player among the Greeks; but Cleomenes, pointing to one of those standing by, said, "By the gods, this man here is my soup-cook."
When Maeandrius, tyrant of Samos, fled to Sparta because of the Persian invasion, and displayed all the gold and silver cups he had brought, offering to give as much as he wished, Cleomenes took nothing; and being wary lest Maeandrius give them to some of the other citizens instead, he went to the ephors and said it would be better for Sparta if his guest-friend the Samian left the Peloponnese, so that he not persuade any of the Spartiates
to become corrupt; and they, heeding him, banished Maeandrius that very day. When someone said, "Why, though you have often defeated the Argives who make war on you, have you not destroyed them?" he said, "We would not destroy them, so that we might have training partners for our young men." When someone asked him why the Spartiates do not dedicate to the gods the spoils taken from their enemies, he said, "Because they come from cowards."
Cleomenes son of Cleombrotus, when someone gave him fighting cocks and said that they die fighting for victory, said, "Give me instead some of those that kill them — those are better than these." Labotas, when someone was making a long speech, said, "Why such a great preamble to me about small matters? However great the matter, so great should be the speech one uses for it." Leotychidas the first, when someone said that he was inconstant, said, "It is because of
circumstances," he said, "not, as with you, because of my own bad character." To one who asked how a man might best preserve the good things he already has, he said, "By not entrusting everything to fortune." Asked what free-born children ought above all to learn, he said, "Those things that will benefit them once they have become men." When someone asked why the Spartiates drink little,
he said, "So that others may not deliberate on our behalf, but we on behalf of others." Leotychidas son of Ariston, to the man who told him that Demaratus's people spoke ill of him, said, "By the gods, I am not surprised — none of them could speak well of anything." When a snake coiled itself around the bolt of the nearer gate, and the seers declared it a portent, he said, "It does not seem so to me —
but if the bolt had coiled itself around the snake, that would have been a portent." To Philip, the initiator into the Orphic rites, who was utterly destitute but claimed that those he initiated are happy after the end of life, he said, "Why then, you fool, do you not die as quickly as possible, so as at once to be rid of your misery and your poverty, and stop lamenting them?" When someone asked him why they
do not dedicate to the gods the arms taken from their enemies, he said that whatever is captured because of the cowardice of its owners is not fit either for the young to look upon or to be dedicated to the gods. Leon son of Eurycratidas, asked what kind of city a man should live in to live safely, said, "One where the inhabitants own neither too much nor too little, and where justice is strong and injustice weak."
Seeing the runners at Olympia straining at the start to gain an unfair advantage, he said, "How much more eagerly do runners strive for speed than for justice!" When someone spoke at the wrong moment about matters that were not without use, he said, "Stranger, you use the right thing at the wrong time." Leonidas son of Anaxandridas, brother of Cleomenes, to one who said, "Except for being king,
you are no different from us," said, "But I would not be king at all, were I not better than you." When his wife Gorgo asked him, as he was setting out for Thermopylae to fight the Persian, whether he had any instructions for her, he said, "Marry good men, and bear good children." When the ephors said he was taking too few men to Thermopylae, he said, "Too few for the task
we are going to — but not too few for any other." And when they said again, "Have you resolved to do anything other than block the passes against the barbarians?" he said, "In word, yes; but in deed, to die for the sake of the Greeks." Once at Thermopylae, he said to his fellow soldiers, "They say the barbarian is drawing near and we are wasting time; but we must already either kill these barbarians or ourselves be ready to die." When someone said, "Because of
the barbarians' arrows, one cannot even see the sun," he said, "Then it will be pleasant, if we are to fight them in the shade." When another said, "They are close upon us," he said, "Then we too are close upon them." When someone said, "Leonidas, do you really come to risk so much against so many with so few?" he said, "If you think I rely on numbers, not even all of Greece together is enough —
for it is a small fraction of their multitude; but if I rely on courage, this number is sufficient." When another man said the same thing, he replied, "Indeed, I am bringing many men — men who are going to die." And when Xerxes wrote to him, "It is possible for you, without warring against the gods, to be arrayed at my side and to rule Greece as sole monarch," he wrote back, "If you knew the good things of life, you would refrain from coveting what belongs to others; but as for me,
...but death on behalf of Greece is better than ruling as sole monarch over my own kinsmen." Again, when Xerxes wrote, "Send me your weapons," he wrote back, "Come and take them."
When he wished to attack the enemy at once, the polemarchs told him that he ought to wait for the rest of the allies. "Why," he said, "are not those present who intend to fight? Or do you not know that it is only those who respect and fear their kings who fight against the enemy?" He ordered his soldiers to take their breakfast as men who would dine in Hades. When asked why the best men prefer a glorious death to an inglorious life, he said, "Because they consider the one to belong to nature, the other to themselves."
Wishing to save the young unmarried men, but knowing that they would not openly consent to it, he gave each of them a dispatch-staff and sent them off to the ephors. He also wished to save three of the full-grown men; but they, realizing his intent, refused to take the staffs. Of these, one said, "I came here as a fighter, not a herald." The second said, "By staying here I shall prove myself the better man." The third said, "I will not be last of these, but first to fight."
Lochagus, the father of Polyaenides and Seiron, when someone reported to him that one of his sons had died, said, "I knew long ago that he had to die."
Lycurgus the lawgiver, wishing to transform the citizens from their former way of life into a more disciplined mode of living and to make them men of true worth — for they had grown soft in their habits — raised two puppies born of the same father and mother. One he left at home and accustomed to gluttony; the other he took out and trained in hunting. Then, bringing them into the assembly, he set out scraps of food together with a hare, and released the hare as well. When each dog rushed to what it was used to, and the one caught the hare, he said, "You see, citizens, that though of the same stock, through their manner of upbringing they have turned out very different from one another, and that training proves more effective than nature in producing excellence."
But some say that the puppies he brought forward were not in fact of the same parentage, but that one was from house-dogs and the other from hunting-dogs, and that he then trained the one of inferior stock for hunting and accustomed the one of better stock only to gluttony; and that when each rushed to what it was used to, he made it clear how much training contributes to making creatures better or worse, and said, "So too, citizens, the noble birth so admired by the many, and our descent from Heracles, does us no good at all unless we do the things by which he appeared the most famous and noble of all men — by training and by learning what is good throughout the whole of life."
Having carried out a redistribution of the land and allotted an equal share to every citizen, he is said, some time later, on returning from abroad and passing through the countryside just after it had been harvested, to have seen the heaps of grain lying side by side and level, and to have been delighted, and, smiling, to have said to those present that the whole of Laconia looked like the estate of many brothers newly divided among them.
And after introducing the cancellation of debts, he also attempted to divide equally all the property held within households, so as entirely to remove inequality and unevenness. But since he saw that people would not readily accept an outright confiscation, he abolished gold and silver coinage and ordered that only iron money be used, and set a limit on how much of one's whole property could be held in exchange for it. Once this was done, all wrongdoing vanished from Lacedaemon; for no one could any longer steal, take bribes, defraud, or plunder, since such money could neither be hidden away, nor was it desirable to possess, nor safe to use, nor could it safely be brought in or taken out.
In addition to this, he also carried out an expulsion of foreigners bringing in every kind of superfluous luxury, so that no merchant, sophist, seer, or itinerant charlatan, nor any craftsman of fine furnishings, entered Sparta. For he allowed them no coinage of easy use, but only the iron kind, worth by weight an Aeginetan mina, though in purchasing power only four coppers.
And intending to attack luxury and remove the eager desire for wealth, he introduced the common messes. To those who asked why he had established these and had divided the citizens under arms into small groups, he said, "So that they may promptly receive their orders, and so that, if any of them attempt some innovation, the wrongdoing may be confined to a few." There is equal sharing of food and drink among them, so that in food or drink, or even in bedding or furnishings or anything else, the rich man has no advantage whatsoever over the poor.
Having thus made wealth an object of no envy, since no one could use it or display it, he used to say to his companions, "How fine it is, my friends, to show through one's actions what wealth truly is: blind." He also took care that no one should dine beforehand at home and then go to the common mess already full of other food or drink; the rest would reproach the man who did not eat or drink with them, as being intemperate and too soft for the common way of life, and whoever was caught doing so was punished.
Indeed, when King Agis, after a long time, had returned from a campaign — he had defeated the Athenians — and wished to dine with his wife for a single day and sent for his portion, the polemarchs did not send it; and when this became known to the ephors the next day, he was fined by them for it. The wealthy, angered by such laws, rose up against Lycurgus, reviled him, and hurled things at him, wishing to stone him to death; and as he fled, pursued, he ran through the marketplace and outran the rest of them, taking refuge in the temple of Athena of the Bronze House. But Alcander, pursuing him, as he turned around, struck out his eye with a staff.
Though this man was handed over to him by public decree for punishment, Lycurgus neither mistreated him nor reproached him, but keeping him to live with him, made him into an admirer of himself and of the way of life he shared with him, and in general a devoted lover of his discipline. In commemoration of the suffering, he founded, in the precinct of Athena of the Bronze House, a shrine of Athena, calling her Optilletis; for the Dorians there call the eyes "optiloi."
When asked why he did not make use of written laws, he said, "Because men who are educated and brought up in the proper discipline can judge for themselves what is useful in each situation." Again, when some asked why he ordered that the roofs of houses be made only with an axe, and the doors only with a saw and no other tool, he said, "So that the citizens may be moderate in all they bring into their houses, and possess nothing that is envied among other peoples."
It is said that from this custom, King Leotychidas the elder, dining once at someone's house and seeing that the ceiling was expensively and elaborately coffered, asked his host whether trees grow four-square in that country.
When asked why he forbade repeated campaigns against the same enemies, he said, "So that they, growing used to constantly defending themselves, should not become experienced in war." For this reason it was thought no small fault in Agesilaus that, by his continual invasions and campaigns into Boeotia, he made the Thebans into a match for the Lacedaemonians. Indeed, seeing him wounded, Antalcidas said, "A fine reward you are receiving, for teaching men to fight who neither wished to nor knew how."
When another asked why he trained the bodies of the girls with running, wrestling, and throwing the discus and javelin, he said, "So that the seed of those to be born, taking a strong start in strong bodies, might grow well, and that the women themselves, enduring their labor pains with strength, might contend both easily and well against their pains, and, should the need arise, might be able to fight on behalf of themselves, their children, and their fatherland."
When some found fault with the girls appearing unclothed in the processions and asked the reason, he said, "So that, practicing the same pursuits as the men, they might fall short in nothing, neither in bodily strength and health, nor in ambition and excellence of soul, and might look down on the reputation prized by the common crowd."
A similar story is told of Gorgo, the wife of Leonidas: when some foreign woman, it seems, said to her, "You Spartan women alone rule your men," she answered, "Yes, because we alone give birth to men."
And by barring unmarried men from watching the Gymnopaediae and attaching disgrace to it, he took great care over the begetting of children, and he deprived unmarried men of the honor and service that the young owed their elders. And no one found fault with what was said to Dercyllidas, though he was a distinguished general: for when he approached, one of the younger men did not yield his seat to him, saying, "You, after all, did not father a son who would yield his seat to me."
When someone asked why he made it law that girls be given in marriage without dowries, he said, "So that some might not remain unmarried for lack of means, nor be sought after for their wealth, but that each man, looking to the girl's character, might make his choice on the basis of merit." For this reason too he banished cosmetic adornment from the city.
And when he had also fixed the proper age for both brides and bridegrooms, he told the one who asked about it that it was "so that children born might be strong, being born of parents in their prime."
To the man who wondered why he prevented a married man from sleeping with his wife, and instead ordered him to spend most of the day with his age-mates and to rest with them all through the night, being with his bride only secretly and with discretion, he said, "So that they may be strong in body, not growing sated with one another, and remain ever fresh in their affection, and produce hardier offspring."
And he banished perfume as a corruption and ruin of oil, and dyeing as a flattery of the senses, and made Sparta inaccessible to all craftsmen of bodily adornment, on the grounds that they debased their crafts through bad workmanship. Such was the chastity of the women in those days, and so far removed were they from the later looseness concerning them, that it was, until then, unthinkable that adultery could occur among them.
And a saying is recorded of a certain Geradas, one of the very ancient Spartans, who, when asked by a foreigner what happened to adulterers among them — since the foreigner saw nothing legislated on the matter by Lycurgus — replied, "Stranger, no one becomes an adulterer among us." And when the man rejoined, "But if one should?" Geradas said, "He pays a bull so large that, stretching up over Taygetus, it can drink from the Eurotas."
And when the man, astonished, said, "But how could there be so huge an ox?" Geradas laughed and said, "How, indeed, could there be an adulterer in Sparta, where wealth, luxury, and personal adornment are held in dishonor, while modesty, good order, and obedience to one's leaders are held in the highest esteem?"
To the man who demanded that a democracy be established in the city, Lycurgus said, "You first make a democracy in your own house."
When someone asked why he ordered the sacrifices to the gods to be so small and inexpensive, he said, "So that we may never fail to honor the divine." Since he permitted the citizens to compete only in those contests in which the hand is not raised in surrender, someone asked the reason; and he said, "So that none of them might become accustomed to giving up under exertion."
When someone asked why he ordered frequent changes of camp, he said, "So that we may do more harm to our enemies." When another asked why he forbade siege warfare against walls, he said, "So that our best men should not be killed by some woman, or child, or similarly insignificant person."
To Thebans who consulted him about the sacred rite and the mourning that they perform for Leucothea, he advised, "If you consider her a goddess, do not mourn her; if a mortal woman, do not perform sacred rites for her as though she were a god."
To citizens who asked, "How might we ward off an invasion of our enemies?" he said, "By remaining poor, and by not letting one man claim to be greater than another." And again, when some asked about city walls, he said that "no city is unwalled which is crowned with men rather than with bricks."
The Spartans also took care of their hair, recalling a saying of Lycurgus on the subject, that it makes handsome men more comely and ugly men more terrifying. He instructed that, in war, once they had routed and defeated an enemy, they should pursue only far enough to secure the victory, and then withdraw at once, declaring that it was neither noble nor Greek to slaughter those who had given way, but rather that such men should be spared.
This was not only honorable and magnanimous but also useful: for those fighting against them, knowing that the Spartans spared those who yielded but killed those who stood their ground, would judge that fleeing was more advantageous than standing fast. And when someone asked why he forbade the despoiling of the enemy dead, he said, "So that men, busying themselves over the spoils, should not neglect the battle, but should preserve their poverty along with their discipline" —
Lysander, when Dionysius the tyrant of Sicily sent expensive robes for his daughters, would not accept them, saying he feared that on account of them the girls would appear all the more unattractive. Yet a little later, sent as ambassador to the same tyrant from the same city, when Dionysius sent him two robes and told him to choose whichever he wished and bring it to his daughter, he said that she herself would choose better, and taking both, he departed.
Lysander, who had become a formidable sophist and embellished most of his affairs with deceptions, holding that justice consists solely in advantage and honor in expediency, used to say that truth is better than falsehood, but that the worth and value of each is determined by its usefulness.
To those who blamed him for accomplishing most of his business by trickery rather than by direct, straightforward success, as unworthy of Heracles, he laughed and said that where the lion's skin does not reach, one must sew on the fox's. When others reproached him for the oaths he had broken, which he had sworn at Miletus, he said, "Boys are to be deceived with knucklebones, men with oaths."
And having defeated the Athenians by an ambush at Aegospotami and pressing them with famine, he brought the city to submission, and wrote to the ephors, "Athens is taken."
And to the Argives, who were disputing with the Lacedaemonians about boundary lines and claiming that they had the more just case, he drew his sword and said, "He who holds this speaks best about boundary lines."
Seeing that the Boeotians were wavering as he marched through their country, he sent men to ask whether he should pass through with spears upright, or
...with spears upright or leveled, as he marched through their country. When a man of Megara spoke to him with frankness in a public assembly, he said, ‘Stranger, your words need a city behind them.’ When the Corinthians had revolted and he was passing along their walls and saw the Spartans hesitating to attack, and a hare was seen leaping across the ditch, he said, ‘Are you not ashamed, Spartans, to fear enemies of such a sort that hares sleep undisturbed beside their walls out of sheer idleness?’
In Samothrace, when he was seeking an oracle, the priest bade him tell what was the most lawless deed he had done in his life. So he asked, ‘Must I do this at your bidding, or at the gods’?’ When the priest said, ‘At the gods’,’ he said, ‘Then get out of my way, and I will tell them, if they ask.’
When a Persian asked him what constitution he most approved, he said, ‘One that assigns to the brave and to the cowardly what is fitting for each.’ To one who said that he praised him and greeted him with excessive affection, he said, ‘I have two oxen in my field; though both are silent, I know precisely which is idle and which does the work.’ When someone reviled him, he said, ‘Keep talking, my little stranger, keep talking and leave nothing out, if you can empty your soul of the evils of which you seem to be full.’
Some time later, after Lysander's death, a dispute arose among the allies, and Agesilaus went to Lysander's house to examine the papers concerning it, for Lysander had kept these in his own possession. There he found a book written by Lysander concerning the constitution, arguing that the kingship ought to be taken from the Eurypontids and the Agiads and put up for general decision, the choice being made from the best men, so that the honor should belong not to the descendants of Heracles, but to whoever, like Heracles, was judged by virtue — the very quality by which Heracles himself had been raised to honors among the gods. He was eager to publish this speech to the citizens, to show what sort of citizen Lysander had secretly been, and to discredit Lysander's friends. But they say that Lacratidas, who was then presiding over the ephors, fearing that the speech, once read aloud, might prove persuasive, restrained Agesilaus and told him that Lysander ought not to be dug up again, but that the speech ought to be buried along with him, composed as it was with such cunning and persuasive skill.
As for those who had become engaged to Lysander's daughters and then, after his death, when he was found to be poor, broke off the engagements, the ephors fined them, because, while they had courted him thinking him rich, once his poverty revealed him to be just and honest they had despised him.
Namertes, sent as an ambassador, when someone there congratulated him on having many friends, asked whether the man had any test by which one of many friends is tried; and when the other pressed to learn it, he said, ‘Misfortune.’
Nicander, when someone said that the Argives spoke ill of him, said, ‘Then they are paying the penalty for speaking ill of good men.’ And when someone asked why they wore their hair long and grew their beards, he said, ‘Because a man's own natural adornment is of all the finest and the least costly.’ When one of the Athenians said, ‘You Spartans, Nicander, cling too much to leisure,’ he said, ‘You speak the truth — but we are not busy, as you are, about whatever happens to come along.’
Panthoedas, on an embassy to Asia, when they showed him a strong fortification wall, said, ‘By the gods, strangers, what a fine women's chamber!’ And in the Academy, when the philosophers were discussing many serious matters, and afterward they asked Panthoedas what he thought of these arguments, he said, ‘What else but serious? Yet they are of no use, if you do not put them into practice.’
Pausanias, son of Cleombrotus, when the Delians were pleading their case about the island against the Athenians, and saying that by their own law women do not give birth on the island and the dead are not buried there, said, ‘How then could this be your fatherland, in which none of you has been born and none will be?’ When exiles urged him to lead his army against the Athenians, saying that when he was proclaimed victor at the Olympic games they alone had hissed him, he said, ‘What then do you suppose men who hissed me when they were prospering will do, now that they are faring badly?’ When someone asked why they made the poet Tyrtaeus a citizen, he said, ‘So that our leader might never appear to be a foreigner.’ To a man weak in body who advised risking battle against the enemy both by land and by sea, he said, ‘Will you then strip and show us what sort of man you are, you who advise us how to fight?’
When some men marveled at the costliness of the barbarians' clothing among the spoils, he said, ‘Better that men themselves be worth much than that they possess things worth much.’ After the victory over the Medes at Plataea, he ordered his attendants to set out the Persian dinner that had been prepared beforehand; and when this proved to be of astonishing extravagance, he said, ‘By the gods, the Persian was a glutton, to come after our barley-cake when he had all this!’
Pausanias, son of Pleistoanax, to one who asked why it was not permitted among them to alter any of the ancient laws, said, ‘Because the laws must be masters of the men, not the men masters of the laws.’ When, in exile at Tegea, he was praising the Spartans, someone said, ‘Why then did you not stay in Sparta instead of going into exile?’ He said, ‘Because physicians too are accustomed to spend their time not among the healthy, but where the sick are.’
When someone asked him how they might be able to defeat the Thracians, he said, ‘If we appoint the best man as general.’ When a physician visited him and said, ‘You have nothing wrong with you,’ he said, ‘No — for I am not using you as my physician.’ When one of his friends reproached him for speaking ill of a certain physician, though he had had no experience of him and had suffered no wrong from him, he said, ‘Because if I had had experience of him, I would not be alive.’ When the physician said to him, ‘You have grown old,’ he said, ‘That is because I did not employ you as my physician.’ He used to say that the best physician was one who did not let the sick rot away slowly, but buried them as quickly as possible.
Paedaretus, when someone said that the enemy were many, said, ‘Then we shall be all the more glorious, for we shall kill more of them.’ Seeing a man who was soft by nature but was praised by the citizens for his gentleness, he said, ‘One ought not to praise men who are like women, nor women who are like men, unless some need overtakes the woman.’ When he was not chosen among the Three Hundred, the rank that held the foremost honor in the city, he went away cheerful and smiling; and when the ephors called him back and asked why he was laughing, he said, ‘Because I am glad on the city's behalf, that it has three hundred citizens better than I am.’
Pleistarchus, son of Leonidas, to one who asked why they were not named after the first kings, said, ‘Because those men needed to lead or to be kings, whereas their successors have no such need at all.’ When a certain advocate kept saying ridiculous things, he said, ‘Will you not take care, stranger, by joking constantly, not to become ridiculous yourself — just as those who wrestle constantly become mere wrestlers?’ To one who was imitating a nightingale, he said, ‘Stranger, I would rather listen to the nightingale itself.’ When someone said that a certain slanderer had praised him, he said, ‘I am amazed no one has told him that I am dead — for that man cannot speak well of anyone while he is alive.’
Pleistoanax, son of Pausanias, when a certain Attic orator called the Spartans uneducated, said, ‘You speak truly — for we alone of the Greeks have learned nothing bad from you.’
Polydorus, son of Alcamenes, when someone kept making frequent threats against his enemies, said, ‘Do you not realize that you are using up most of your vengeance beforehand?’ When he was leading his army out against Messene, someone asked whether he intended to fight against his brothers, and he said, ‘No — I am marching against the part of the country that has not yet been allotted.’ Again, after the Argives had been utterly defeated in the pitched battle of the Three Hundred, the allies urged Polydorus not to let the opportunity slip, but to advance upon the enemy's wall and take the city, since it would be very easy now that the men had perished and only the women were left. But he said to them, ‘To conquer my opponents by fighting on equal terms, that I hold to be honorable; but having fought only for the boundaries of our territory, to desire also to seize their city — that I do not consider just, for I came to recover land, not to capture a city.’ When asked why the Spartans face danger bravely in war, he said, ‘Because they have learned to respect their commanders, not to fear them.’
Polycratidas, on an embassy to the King's generals along with others, when they were asked whether they had come in a private or a public capacity, said, ‘If we succeed, publicly; if not, privately.’
Phoebidas, before the peril at Leuctra, when some said that this day would reveal the brave man, said that the day was worth a great deal, since it had the power to reveal the brave man.
Soüs, it is said, when besieged in a harsh and waterless place by the Cleitorians, agreed to relinquish to them the land he had won by the spear, on condition that all his men with him should drink from the nearby spring — which the enemy was guarding. When the oaths had been sworn, he gathered his men and offered the kingship to whoever did not drink; but no one held out, and all drank. He himself, however, came down last of all, only sprinkled himself with the water while the enemy still stood by, and then went away and kept possession of the land, on the ground that he had not drunk.
Teleclus, to one who said that his father spoke ill of him, said, ‘If he did not have reason to say it, he would not say it.’ When his brother said that the citizens did not treat him in the same way as they treated him, though they were of the same stock, but rather more inconsiderately, he said, ‘That is because you do not know how to be wronged, and I do.’ When asked why it was the custom among them for the young to rise before their elders, he said, ‘So that, by showing such respect toward those who are not their kin, they may honor their own parents all the more.’ When someone asked how much property he possessed, he said, ‘No more than is sufficient.’
Charillus, when asked why Lycurgus made so few laws, said, ‘Because men of few words have need of few laws too.’ When someone asked why they lead unmarried girls out in public unveiled but married women veiled, he said, ‘Because the girls still need to find husbands, while the married women need to keep the ones they have.’ When one of the helots behaved too insolently toward him, he said, ‘If I were not angry, I would kill you.’ When someone asked him what constitution he considered best, he said, ‘One in which the greatest number of citizens are willing to compete with one another in virtue, without civil strife.’ When someone asked why all their images of the gods were set up armed, he said, ‘So that we may never transfer to the gods the reproaches made against men for cowardice, and so that the young may never pray to the gods unarmed.’ To one who asked why they wore their hair long, he said, ‘Because among adornments, this one is natural and costs nothing.’
To Samian envoys who spoke at excessive length, the Spartans said, ‘We have forgotten the beginning, and we did not understand the end, because we had forgotten the beginning.’ When an orator drew out a long speech and asked for their answer so that he might report it to his citizens, they said, ‘Then report this: that you barely managed to stop talking, and we barely managed to keep listening.’ To the Thebans, who were disputing certain points with them, they said, ‘One must either think less of oneself, or have greater power.’
A Spartan, asked why he grew the hairs of his beard so long, said, ‘So that, seeing the white hairs, I may do nothing unworthy of them.’ Another, when someone asked, ‘Why do you use short daggers?’, said, ‘So that we may come to close quarters with the enemy.’ When someone was praising certain men as the best fighters, a Spartan said, ‘At Troy.’ Another, hearing that some men who had already dined were being forced to drink, said, ‘Are they also forced to eat?’ When Pindar wrote, ‘Athens, bulwark of Greece,’ a Spartan said that Greece would surely collapse, resting on such a bulwark as that. When someone, seeing in a painted panel Spartans being slaughtered by Athenians, said, ‘Brave men, these Athenians!’, a Spartan retorted, ‘In the painting, yes.’
To a man who kept lending an ear to slanderous accusations, a Spartan said, ‘Stop supplying your ears against me.’ To a man being punished who said, ‘I sinned unwillingly,’ someone said, ‘Then be punished unwillingly too.’ Someone, seeing men sitting on stools in a latrine, said, ‘May it never be my lot to sit in a place from which one cannot rise up for an elder.’
Once, when some Chians on a visit vomited after dinner in the ephors' hall and fouled the seats where the ephors themselves sat, at first the Spartans searched vigorously for the culprits, in case they should turn out to be citizens; but when they learned that they were Chians, they issued a proclamation that Chians were permitted to behave outrageously. When someone saw hard almonds being sold at double the price, he said, ‘Are stones so scarce, then?’ Someone, having plucked a nightingale and finding very little flesh on it, said, ‘You are a voice, and nothing else.’
One of the Spartans, seeing Diogenes the Cynic embracing a bronze statue when it was bitterly cold, asked him if he was cold; and when Diogenes denied it, he said, ‘Then what great thing are you doing?’ A man of Metapontum, reproached for cowardice by a Spartan, said, ‘And yet we hold no small share of other people's land.’ The Spartan replied, ‘Then you are not only cowards but unjust as well.’
A visitor to Sparta, lacing his sandal while standing upright on one leg, said to a Spartan, ‘I do not think you, Spartan, could stand on one foot as long as I can.’ The Spartan replied, ‘No indeed — but then, there is not a single goose that cannot.’ When someone was extolling himself for his skill in rhetoric, a Spartan said, ‘But by the twin gods, there neither is nor ever shall be an art that has laid hold of anything apart from truth.’
When an Argive once said, ‘Among us there are many graves of Spartans,’ a Spartan said, ‘But among us there is not a single grave of an Argive’ — meaning that they themselves had often set foot on Argive soil, while the Argives had never set foot on Spartan soil. A Spartan, taken captive and put up for sale, when the auctioneer announced, ‘I am selling a Spartan,’ silenced him by saying, ‘Cry me as a prisoner of war.’
One of the men serving as soldiers under Lysimachus, when he asked him whether he was one of the helots, said, ‘Do you really suppose that a Spartan would come to serve for your four obols a day?’ When the Thebans, having defeated the Spartans at Leuctra, came right up to the Eurotas, and someone boasted, ‘Where are the Spartans now?’, a Spartan who had been taken captive by them said, ‘They are not here — for otherwise you...
...came here." When the Athenians, after surrendering their city, asked to be allowed to keep only Samos, they said, "When you did not have even yourselves, do you now seek to have others too?" From this comes the proverb: "he who does not possess himself wants to have Samos."
When the Lacedaemonians took a city by force, the ephors said, "The wrestling-ground of the young men is gone; the young men will no longer have opponents." When the king of another city — one which had often caused trouble for the Spartans — promised to destroy it utterly, they would not allow it, saying, "By no means destroy or remove the whetstone of the young men."
They did not set trainers over the wrestlers, so that rivalry should arise not from skill but from courage. That is why Lysander too, when asked how Charon had beaten him, said, "By his resourcefulness."
When Philip wrote, on arriving in their country, to ask whether he should come to them as friend or enemy, they answered, "Neither."
Having sent an envoy to Antigonus, son of Demetrius, when they learned that he had addressed him as "king," they fined him — even though he was bringing each of them a bushel of wheat from Antigonus during a famine. When Demetrius complained that they had sent only one envoy to him, they said, "Is not one enough, when sent to one?"
When someone offered excellent advice but was himself a wicked man, they accepted the advice, but took it from him and credited it instead to another man who had lived well.
When brothers were quarreling with one another, they fined the father, because he allowed his sons to be at odds. They fined a lyre-player who had come to live among them, because he played the cithara with his fingers.
Two boys were fighting, and one wounded the other with a sickle, a mortal blow. When the wounded boy's companions, as they were about to be separated, promised to avenge him and kill the one who had struck him, he said, "By no means, in the gods' name — for it would not be just; I too would have done this, had I been quicker and proven the better man."
Another boy, when the season came in which it was customary for free boys to steal whatever they could, and it was shameful only to be caught, stole a live fox cub together with the boys who were with him and gave it to him to guard. When those who had lost it came looking for it, he happened to have hidden the cub under his cloak; and though the animal grew savage and tore into his side as far as his entrails, he kept still, so as not to be found out. Afterward, when those men had left and his companions saw what had happened and blamed him, saying it would have been better to show the fox cub than to hide it until death, he said,
"Not at all — better to die without yielding to the pain than to save one's life shamefully by being exposed through weakness."
Some people who met Spartans on the road said, "You are in luck — robbers just left this spot." They replied, "No, by Enyalius — rather, it is they who are lucky not to have met us." A Spartan, asked what he knew, said, "How to be free."
A Spartan boy, taken captive by King Antigonus and sold, was obedient to his purchaser in everything he thought fit for a free man to do; but when the man ordered him to carry a chamber pot, he would not bear it, saying, "I will not be a slave." When the man insisted, the boy climbed onto the roof and said, "You will learn the value of your purchase," then threw himself down and died.
Another, being sold, when someone said, "If I buy you, will you be useful?" replied, "Even if you do not buy me." Another captive, being sold, when the herald announced that he was selling "a slave," said, "Damn you — say 'a prisoner of war.'"
A Spartan had a fly as the device on his shield, and one no bigger than a real fly; when some mocked him, saying he had done this so as not to be noticed, he said, "No — so that I may be seen; for I approach the enemy so closely that they can see how big my device is."
Another, when a lyre was passed around at a symposium, said, "It is not Laconian to play the fool."
A Spartan, asked whether the road to Sparta was safe, said, "That depends on how you sit: for lions go wherever they please, but we hunt hares from where we sit."
In a wrestling match, when his opponent kept striking idly around his neck and dragging him to the ground, since the man who had fallen upon him outmatched him in strength, he bit his arm; and the other said, "You bite, Spartan, like the women." "No," said the first, "but like the lions."
A lame man going out to war, when some followed him mocking and laughing, turned and said, "Wretched fellows, one must fight the enemy not by running, but by standing firm and holding one's post."
Another, shot with an arrow and dying, said that what troubled him was not that he was going to die, but that he had been killed by an effeminate archer without having accomplished anything.
Someone who had put up at an inn and given meat to the innkeeper to prepare, when the innkeeper asked also for cheese and oil, said, "Well, if I had had cheese, would I still have needed meat?"
To someone who called Lampis the Aeginetan blessed, because he seemed to be the richest man, owning many merchant ships, a Spartan said, "I have no regard for prosperity that hangs from ropes."
When someone told a Spartan he was lying, he answered, "We are free men; but the others, if they do not speak the truth, will pay for it." When someone proposed to set a corpse upright, and though he tried every way could not, he said, "By the two gods, there must be something missing inside."
Tynnichus, when his son Thrasybulus died, bore it with fortitude; and an epigram was made about it: "Thrasybulus came to Pitana on his shield, without breath, having received seven wounds from the Argives, showing them all in front. And the old man Tynnichus, laying his bloodied son on the pyre, said this: 'Let cowards be wept for — but you, my child, I will bury without tears, you who were mine and Sparta's alike.'"
When a bath attendant poured a great deal of water over Alcibiades the Athenian, a Spartan said, "Why so much, as if for a clean man? You should pour more on someone truly filthy."
When Philip of Macedon commanded something by letter, the Lacedaemonians wrote back, "Concerning what you wrote to us — no." When he invaded Laconia and everyone thought they would be destroyed, he said to one of the Spartans, "What will you do now, Spartans?" "What else," the man replied, "than die bravely? For we alone of the Greeks have learned to be free and not to obey others."
After the defeat at Agis' hands, when Antipater demanded fifty boys as hostages, Eteocles, then ephor, said they would not give the boys, lest they grow up untrained in their ancestral discipline and so fail to become citizens; but they would give twice as many old men or women instead, if he wished. When Antipater threatened terrible things if he did not receive them, they answered together, "If you impose things harsher than death, we will die all the more readily."
An old man at Olympia, eager to watch the contest in progress, could not find a seat; and going about to many places, he was insulted and mocked, no one making room for him. But when he came to where the Lacedaemonians sat, all the boys stood up, and many of the men too, giving up their place. When the assembled Greeks marked this custom with applause and praised it highly, the old man, shaking his gray head and gray beard, and weeping, said, "Alas for the troubles of Greece —
all the Greeks know what is right, but only the Lacedaemonians practice it." Some say the same thing happened at Athens too: for during the Panathenaea the Athenians mistreated an old man, calling him over as if to give him a seat, but then, when he came, not receiving him; and as he passed through nearly everyone and reached the seats of the Lacedaemonian envoys, all of them rose from their benches and made way for him.
The crowd, admiring what had happened, applauded with great approval, and one of the Spartans said, "By the two gods, the Athenians know what is right, but they do not do it."
A beggar asked a Spartan for alms; he said, "But if I give to you, you will only beg the more; and the man who first gave to you is responsible for this disgrace of yours, since he made you idle." A Spartan, seeing someone collecting money for the gods, said, "I pay no heed to gods poorer than myself."
Someone who caught an adulterer with an ugly woman said, "Wretch, what compulsion drove you to it?" Another, hearing an orator turning out long, elaborate periods, said, "By the two gods, the man is bold indeed — he twists his tongue so skillfully around nothing at all."
Someone who came to Lacedaemon and saw the honor shown by the young toward their elders said, "Only in Sparta does it pay to grow old." A Spartan, asked what sort of poet Tyrtaeus was, said, "Good at kindling the souls of the young."
Another, suffering from his eyes, went out to war nonetheless; and when some said to him, "Where are you going in this state, and what will you accomplish?" he said, "Even if I do nothing else, I will blunt an enemy's sword."
Bulis and Sperthias, Lacedaemonians, went of their own will to Xerxes, king of the Persians, to pay the penalty which Lacedaemon owed by oracle, because they had killed heralds sent to them by the Persian king. Coming before Xerxes, they bade him deal with them however he wished on behalf of the Lacedaemonians. He, admiring them, released the men and asked them to remain with him. "And how could we live here," they said, "having abandoned our fatherland and its laws, and these men, for whose sake we have come so long a way to die?"
When the general Hydarnes pressed them further, saying they would receive honor equal to the king's closest and most favored friends, they said, "You seem not to understand what freedom is worth — no man of sense would exchange it for the kingdom of Persia."
A Spartan, since on the previous day his host had turned him away but on the next day received him lavishly with rich bedding, stepped onto the bedding and trampled it, remarking that it was because of things like this that he had not even slept on a mat the day before.
Another, coming to Athens and seeing the Athenians auctioning off salt fish and other provisions, collecting taxes, running brothels, and doing other shameful things without regarding any of it as disgraceful — when he returned to his own country and his fellow citizens asked him what things were like at Athens, he said, "All fine" — speaking ironically, and implying that at Athens everything is considered fine, and nothing shameful.
Another, asked about something, answered "No." When the questioner said, "You are lying," he replied, "Then you see how foolish you are, to ask about things you already know."
Some Spartans once came on an embassy to Lygdamis the tyrant; and when he kept postponing their meeting again and again, and someone remarked that in the end he was simply being weak about the whole matter, the envoys said, "Tell him that, by the gods, we have not come to wrestle with him, but to talk with him."
Someone initiating a Spartan into the mysteries asked him what was the most impious thing he was conscious of having done. He said, "The gods know." When the man pressed him further, saying, "You must tell me at all costs," the Spartan asked in return, "Must I tell it to you, or to the god?" And when the man said, "To the god," he said, "Then you may leave."
Another, passing a tomb at night and imagining he saw some apparition, charged at it, thrusting with his spear, and driving it home said, "Where are you fleeing from me, soul twice dead?"
Another, having vowed to throw himself from the Leucadian cliff, climbed up but turned back on seeing the height; when reproached for it, he said, "I did not think my vow needed a greater vow to carry it out."
Another, in battle, was about to bring his sword down on an enemy, but when the recall was sounded, he did not strike. When someone asked why, having his enemy at his mercy, he had not killed him, he said, "Because it is better to obey one's commander than to kill."
To someone defeated at Olympia, a man said, "Spartan, your opponent proved stronger than you." "No," he replied, "but better at throwing."