Apophthegmata Laconica

When a physician paid him a visit and said, You have nothing wrong with you, he said, No, for I do not employ you as my physician.

When one of his friends blamed him because he spoke ill of a certain physician, although he had never had anything to do with him, and had not suffered any harm at his hands, he said, Because if I had ever had anything to do with him I should not now be alive.

When the physician said to him, You have lived to be an old man, he said, That is because I never employed you as my physician.

He said that the best physician was the man who did not allow his patients to rot, but buried them quickly.

Paedaretus, when someone said that the enemy were many in number, remarked,Then we shall be the more famous, for we shall kill more men.

Seeing a certain man who was effeminate by nature, but was commended by the citizens for his moderation, he said, People should not praise men who are like to women nor women who are like to men, unless some necessity overtake the woman.

When he was not chosen as one of the three hundred, [*](Cf. Herodotus, viii. 124; Xenophon, Constitution of Sparta, 4. 3.) which was rated as the highest honour in the State, he went away cheerful and smiling; but when the Ephors called him back, and asked why he was laughing, he said, Because I congratulate

Pleistarchus the son of Leonidas, in answer to one who asked him for what reason they did not take their titles from the names of the first kings, said, Because the first kings needed to be absolute monarchs, but those who followed them had no such need. [*](One of the two lines of the kings of Sparta was called Agids (or Agiads) from Agis, the second of that line, and the other Eurypontids from Eurypon, the third of that line. Cf. Plutarch’s Life of Lycurgus, chap. ii. (40 D); Strabo, viii. 366; Pausanias, iii. 7. 1. Presumably Plutarch means that the later Spartan kings did not wish to perpetuate the memory of any harshness, which would have been suggested by the names of the earlier absolute monarchs.)

When a certain advocate kept making jests, he said, You had better be on your guard, my friend, against jesting all the time, lest you become a jest yourself, just as those who wrestle all the time become wrestlers.

In retort to the man who imitated a nightingale, he said, My friend, I have had more pleasure in hearing the nightingale itself. [*](Cf. the note on Moralia, 212 F (58), supra. )

When someone said that a certain evil-speaker was commending him, he said, I wonder whether possibly someone may not have told him that I was dead; for the man can never say a good word of anybody who is alive. [*](Cf. the note on Moralia, 224 D (1), supra. )

Pleistoanax, the son of Pausanias, when an Attic orator called the Spartans unlearned, said, You are

Polydorus, the son of Alcamenes, when a certain man was continually making threats against his enemies, said, Don’t you see that you are using up the best part of your vengeance?

As he was leading out his army to Messene, someone asked him if he was going to fight against his brothers. He said that he was not, but was merely proceeding to the unassigned portion of the land.

The Argives, after the battle of the three hundred, [*](Herodotus, i. 82.) were again overcome, with all their forces, in a set battle, and the allies urged Polydorus not to let slip the opportunity, but to make a descent upon the enemy’s wall and capture their city; for this, they said, would be very easy, since the men had been destroyed and the women only were left. He said in answer to them, To my mind it is honourable, when fighting on even terms, to conquer our opponents, but, after having fought to settle the boundaries of the country, to desire to capture the city I do not regard as just; for I came to recapture territory and not to capture a city.