Apophthegmata Laconica

Being asked how anybody could best make himself agreeable to people, he said, If his conversation with them is most pleasant and his suggestions most profitable. [*](Cf.Moralia, 213 C (65), supra. )

When a lecturer was about to read a laudatory essay on Heracles, he said, Why, who says anything against him? [*](Cf. the note on Moralia, 192 C (3), supra. )

When Agesilaus was wounded in battle by the Thebans, Antalcidas said to his face, You have your just reward for the lessons in fighting you have given to that people who had no desire to fight and no knowledge even of fighting. For it appeared that they had been made warlike by the continual campaigns of Agesilaus against them. [*](Cf. the note on Moralia, 189 F (5), supra. )

He used to say that the young men were the walls of Sparta, and the points of their spears its boundaries. [*](Cf. the note on Moralia, 210 E (28, 29, 30), supra. )

In answer to the man who sought to know why the Spartans use short daggers in war, he said, Because we fight close to the enemy. [*](Cf. the note on Moralia, 191 E, supra. )

Antiochus, when he was Ephor, hearing that Philip had given the Messenians their land, asked if he had also provided them with the power to prevail in fighting to keep it. [*](Repeated in Moralia, 192 B, supra. )

Areus, when some men commended, not their own wives, but certain wives of other men, said, By Heaven, there ought to be no random talk about fair and noble women, and their characters ought to be totally unknown save only to their consorts. [*](Cf.Moralia, 220 D and 242 E, infra; Thucydides, ii. 45.)

Once upon a time, when he was passing through Selinus in Sicily, he saw inscribed upon a monument this elegiac couplet: Here at Selinus these men, who tyrc.nny strove to extinguish, Brazen-clad Ares laid low; nigh to our gates were they slain. Whereupon he said, You certainly deserved to die for trying to extinguish tyranny when it was ablaze; rather you ought to have let it burn itself out completely. [*](Cf. Plutarch’s Life of Lycurgus, chap. xx. (52 E).)