Lycurgus (20.5-20.6)

And even from their jests it is possible to judge of their character. For it was their wont never to talk at random, and to Jet slip no speech which did not have some thought or other worth serious attention. For instance, when one of them was invited to hear a man imitate the nightingale, he said: I have heard the bird herself. And another, on reading the epitaph:—

Tyranny’s fires they were trying to quench when panoplied Ares

Slew them; Selinus looked down from her gates on their death,

And a youth, when some one promised to give him game-cocks that would die fighting, said, Don’t do that, but give me some of the kind that kill fighting. Another, seeing men seated on stools in a privy, said: May I never sit where I cannot give place to an elder. The character of their apophthegms, then, was such as to justify the remark that love of wisdom rather than love of bodily exercise was the special characteristic of a Spartan.