Apophthegmata Laconica

Plutarch

Plutarch. Moralia, Vol. III. Babbitt, Frank Cole, translator. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1931 (printing).

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,

my good sir, to do good to our friends, and to make friends of our enemies? This, which is universally conceded to be one of Socrates’ maxims, [*](But not quite in these words; Cf. Plato, Republic, i. chap. ix. (335 B ff.), Crito, chap. x. (49 A ff.), Gorgias, 469 A-B and 475 B-D.) is also referred to Ariston. [*](A similar remark is attributed to Cleobulus by Diogenes Laertius, i. 91.)