Laconic Apophthegms; or Remarkable Sayings of the Spartans. (56-60)

Nicander, when one told him that the Argives spake very ill of him, said, Well, they suffer for speaking ill of good men. And to one that enquired why they wore long hair and long beards, he answered, Because man’s natural ornaments are the handsomest and the cheapest. An Athenian saying, Nicander, you Spartans are extremely idle; You say true, he answered, but we do not busy ourselves like you in every trifle.

When Panthoidas was ambassador in Asia and some showed him a strong fortification, Faith, said he, it is a fine cloister for women. In the Academy, when the philosophers had made a great many and excellent discourses, and asked Panthoidas how he liked them; Indeed, said he, I think them very good, but of no profit at all, since you yourselves do not use them.

Pausanias the son of Cleombrotus, when the Delians pleaded their title to the island against the Athenians, and urged that according to their law no women were ever brought to bed or any carcass buried in the isle, said. How then can that be your country, in which not one of you was born or shall ever lie? The exiles urging him to march against the Athenians, and saying that, when he was proclaimed victor in the Olympic games, these alone hissed; How, says he, since they hissed whilst we did them good, what do you think they will do when abused? When one asked him why they made Tyrtaeus the poet a citizen, he answered, That no foreigner should be our captain. A man of a weak and puny body advising to fight the enemy both by sea and land; Pray, sir, says he, will you strip and show what a man you are who advise to engage? When some amongst the spoils of the barbarians admired the richness of their clothes; It had been better, he said, that they had been men of worth themselves than that they should possess things of worth. After the victory over the Medes at Plataea, he commanded his officers to set before him the Persian banquet that was already dressed; which appearing very sumptuous, By heaven, quoth he, the Persian is an abominable glutton, who, when he hath such delicacies at home, comes to eat our barley-cakes.

Pausanias the son of Plistoanax replied to one that asked him why it was not lawful for the Spartans to abrogate any of their old laws, Because men ought to be subject to laws, and not the laws to men. When banished and at Tegea, he commended the Lacedaemonians. One said to him, Why then did you not stay at Sparta? And he returned, Physicians are conversant not amongst the

healthy, but the diseased. To one asking him how they should conquer the Thracians, he replied, If we make the best man our captain. A physician, after he had felt his pulse and considered his constitution, saying, He ails nothing; It is because, sir, he replied, I use none of your physic. When one of his friends blamed him for giving a physician an ill character, since he had no experience of his skill nor received any injury from him; No, faith, said he, for had I tried him, I had not lived to give this character. And when the physician said, Sir, you are an old man; That happens, he replied, because you were never my doctor. And he was used to say, that he was the best physician, who did not let his patients rot above ground, but quickly buried them.

Paedaretus, when one told him the enemies were numerous, said, Therefore we shall get the greater reputation, for we shall kill the more. Seeing a man soft by nature and a coward commended by the citizens for his lenity and good disposition, he said, We should not praise men that are like women, nor women that are like men, unless some extremity forceth a woman to stand upon her guard. When he was not chosen into the three hundred (the chief order in the city), he went away laughing and very jocund; and the Ephors calling him back and asking why he laughed, Why, said he, I congratulate the happiness of the city, that enjoys three hundred citizens better than myself.