Apophthegmata Laconica

To a man who was being punished, and kept saying, I did wrong unwillingly, someone retorted, Then take your punishment unwillingly.

Someone, seeing men seated on stools [*](Not in Sparta, of course.) in a privy, said, God forbid that I should ever sit where it is not possible to rise and yield my place to an older man. [*](As in Plutarch’s Life of Lycurgus, chap. xx. (52 F).)

When some Chians, on a visit to Sparta, vomited after dinner in the hall of the Ephors, and befouled with ordure the very chairs in which the Ephors were wont to sit, the Spartans, first of all, instituted a vigorous investigation, lest possibly these might be citizens; but when they learned that they were, in fact, Chians, they caused public proclamation to be made that The Spartans grant permission to the Chians to be filthy. [*](A similar story is told of Clazomenians by Aelian, Varia Historia, ii. 15.)

When someone saw almonds of the hard sort [*](Cf., for example, Athenaeus, 53 A.) selling at double the price of others, he said, Are stones so scarce?

A man plucked a nightingale and finding almost no meat, said, It’s all voice ye are, and nought else. [*](Vox et praeterea nihil.)

One of the Spartans saw Diogenes the Cynic holding his arms around a bronze statue in very cold weather, [*](A part ofh is self-imposed training to inure himself to cold, as in the summer he used to roll in the hot sand to inure himself to heat, according to Diogenes Laertius, vi. 23.) and asked Diogenes if he were cold; and when Diogenes said No, the other said,What great thing are you doing then?

One of the people of Metapontum, being reproached for cowardice by a Spartan, [*](Possibly Cleonymus (Diodorus, xx. 104).) said,But as a matter of fact we have not a little of the country of other states; whereupon the Spartan replied, Then you are not only cowardly, but also unjust.