But if, on the other hand, you are speaking nonsense, and if it is fitting that men who
 were descended from gods should have cultivated these virtues more than all others and
 transmitted them to their successors as well, then you cannot escape being thought mad by
 all who hear you for being so reckless and unjust and undiscriminating in your praise.
 Furthermore, if you were praising them without having heard any of my speech, you would no
 less be speaking drivel, but you would not be manifestly contradicting yourself. But now, since you have commended my discourse, which proves that the Lacedaemonians have
 committed many outrages both against their own kinsmen and the rest of the Hellenes, how
 could you then say that those who are open to these charges have been the leaders in the
 best ways of life “Moreover, this consideration also has escaped you, that the things which have been
 overlooked, whether in ways of living or in the arts or in all other activities, are not
 discovered by any and every one, but by men who have superior endowments and are both able
 to learn the most of what has been discovered before their time and willing more than all
 others to give their minds to the search for what is new. But in these respects the Lacedaemonians are more backward than the barbarians. For you
 will find that the latter have been both pupils and teachers of many discoveries, while
 the Lacedaemonians have fallen so far behind our common culture and learning that they do
 not even try to instruct themselves in letters ”Before the
 development of the body, that of the mind had completely to give way“ in Sparta . See Plut. Lyc.
 16 ; Gilbert GCA p.64. —a science which has so much power
 that those who understand and use it become apprized not only of the things which have
 been accomplished in their own time but also of the things which have come to pass in any
 age whatsoever. Nevertheless, you have made bold to assert even of those who are ignorant of such matters
 that they have been the discoverers of the best ways of life, and that too when you know
 that they train their own boys in habits and practices by which they hope that, so far
 from becoming the benefactors of others, they will become most adept in doing injury to
 the Hellenes.