If you wish your house to be well managed, imitate the Spartan Lycurgus. For as he did not fence his city with walls, but fortified the inhabitants by virtue and preserved the city always free; Schweig. quotes Polybius ix. 10, 1, a city is not adorned by external things, but by the virtue of those who dwell in it. Alcaeus says, 22, Bergk, Poetae Lyrici Graeci, 1843 ,— ou) li/foi teixe/wn eu)= dedoma/menoi, a)ll’ a)/ndres to/lios pu/rgos a)rh/i+oi so do you not cast around (your house) a large court and raise high towers, but strengthen the dwellers by good will and fidelity and friendship, and then nothing harmful will enter it, not even if the whole band of wickedness shall array itself against it. Do not hang your house round with tablets and pictures, but decorate it with moderation ( σωφροσύνη ): for the one is of a foreign (unsuitable) kind, and a temporary deception of the eyes; but the other is a natural and indelible, and perpetual ornament of the house. Instead of an herd of oxen, endeavour to assemble herds of friends in your house. As a wolf resembles a dog, so both a flatterer, and an adulterer and a parasite, resemble a friend. Take care then that instead of watch dogs you do not without knowing it let in mischievous wolves. To be eager that your house should be admired by being whitened with gypsum, is the mark of a man who has no taste: but to set off (decorate) our morals by the goodness of our communication (social habits) is the mark of a man who is a lover of beauty and a lover of man.