Apophthegmata Laconica

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).)

When someone commended the maxim of Cleomenes, who, on being asked what a good king ought to do, said, To do good to his friends and evil to his enemies, Ariston said, How much better,