Agesilaus

The praise of those who were prepared to censure faults they disapproved was pleasing to him, and he never resented candour, but avoided dissimulation like a snare. Slanderers he hated more than thieves, deeming loss of friends graver than loss of money.

The mistakes of private persons he judged leniently, because few interests suffer by their incompetence; but the errors of rulers he treated as serious, since they lead to many troubles. Kingship, he held, demands not indolence, but manly virtue.

He would not allow a statue of himself to be set up, though many wanted to give him one, but on memorials of his mind he laboured unceasingly, thinking the one to be the sculptor’s work, the other his own, the one appropriate to the rich, the other to the good.

In the use of money he was not only just but generous, thinking that a just man may be content to leave other men’s money alone, but the generous man is required also to spend his own in the service of others. He was ever god-fearing, believing that they who are living life well are not yet happy, but only they who have died gloriously are blessed.