" When some were praising the magnificence and justice
with which the Eleans conducted the Olympian games, Agis said, "What is
there so very remarkable in the people of Elis acting justly on one day
in every five years?"
A stranger was vaunting his admiration of them, and was saying that in
his own city he was called a lover of Sparta. Theopompus observed, "It
would be more to your credit to be called a lover of your own city."
Pleistoanax the son of Pausanias, when an Athenian orator reproached the
Lacedaemonians for ignorance, observed, "What you say is quite true, for
we are the only Greeks who have not learned some mischief from you."
When a stranger asked Archidamidas how many Spartans there were, he
answered, "Enough to keep off bad men."
One may also discover their peculiarities in their jokes; for they are
taught never to talk at random, nor to utter a syllable that does not
contain some thought. As, when one of them was invited to hear a man
imitate the nightingale, he answered, "I have heard the original;" and
the man who read this epigram--
"These men, to quench a tyrant's pride,
Before Selinus fought and died."
"These men," said he, "deserved to die; for, instead of quenching it,
they should have let it burn itself out." When a young man was promised
a present of cocks that would fight till they died, he said, "I had
rather have some that will fight and kill their foes.
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