Apophthegmata Laconica

Plutarch

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

The suitors of his daughters, when after his death he was found to be a poor man, renounced their obligations; but the Ephors punished them because when they thought he was rich they courted his favour, but when they found from his poverty that he was just and honest they disdained him. [*](Cf. Plutarch’s Life of Lysander, chap. xxx. (451 A), and Aelian, Varia Historia, vi. 4, and x. 15.)